


But Not Forgotten

by Dorksidefiker



Category: Doctor Who, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:24:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorksidefiker/pseuds/Dorksidefiker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can never really outrun the past. Eager to finally defeat Castiel once and for all, Raphael orders that Donna Noble's Time Lord knowledge be gotten from her. Now the race is on, and the fate of the universe rests in the hands of a girl who waited, a madman in a blue box, an angel in a dirty overcoat, a man with a GED and a 'give 'em hell' attitude, and a woman who doesn't even know what she knows.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a plan is set in motion to strike Dean Winchester where he is most vulnerable: his brother Sam, trapped in Hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Superwho Big Bang. Special thanks to Scarab_Dynasty, [artist](http://scarab-dynasty.livejournal.com/481359.html#cutid1), beta reader, and enabler. Without her, this story could never have happened... so if you need someone to blame, there ya go.
> 
> Set after the end of Season 5 of Supernatural, and Series 5 of New!Who.

 

Raphael stood in a spot slightly to the left of the material plane, watching but not truly a part of it, following the progress of one tiny soul and wondering _why_ he was there instead of planning his next assault against Castiel and the fools who dared to deny the glory of the Apocalypse and the coming of Paradise. He turned his attention to Nathaniel, small and plump and utterly unremarkable both as an angel and in the borrowed flesh of the female vessel. Nathaniel looked at Raphael with pure adoration, practically squirming with pleasure. That look swiftly morphed to that of a kicked puppy when Raphael spoke.  
  
“Why are you wasting my time, sister?”  
  
Nathaniel gestured towards the mortal that she had already pointed out; solidly built with straight red hair, tapping away speedily on the keyboard in front of her while chattering at the man standing over her. Very ordinary. Very _dull_. Not that unlike Nathaniel, when Raphael thought about it. After a moment of panicked confusion from the lesser angel, Nathaniel started speaking quickly. “You must look beneath the surface, my brother! I know the human isn’t much at first glance, but-”  
  
Raphael hushed Nathaniel’s babbling with a wave of his hand, extending his senses to better study the human. A small, ordinary, unimportant soul, nothing that warranted this waste of his precious time--  
  
And then Raphael saw it, buried deep beneath all the layers of dullness. Like staring in to the sun after looking at a dying flashlight. Something brilliant and powerful and _perfect_ , exactly what Raphael needed. “Nathaniel, explain!”  
  
“I - I can’t, brother,” Nathaniel told the archangel, stepping between Raphael and the woman. “But I believe she was involved in a Gallifreyan visitation to the planet.”  
  
Raphael _twitched_ , making the lights in the office flicker for a moment and startling the humans. “They’re _gone_ , they’re _all_ supposed to be gone, never to plague us again!” he hissed.  
  
“All but one,” Nathaniel corrected gently. “And he left something behind in _her_.” The angel smiled, a sweet and open expression, like a child who expected to be told that they had done exceptionally well on their exams. “But he hasn’t been anywhere near her, not for years, just like the others we’ve noted before. Remember? But unlike them, he left… _that_ behind.”  
  
Raphael could have sung with joy. He could see it clearly now, what was lurking inside that woman. Centuries of knowledge, near limitless power, hidden away and just waiting to be tapped. He could break the stalemate with the upstart Castiel and set the universe back on it’s proper path. Once again, everything would be right in the world. “Bring the woman-”  
  
“Donna, sir,” Nathaniel interrupted, earning herself a sharp glare, “Donna Temple-Noble.”  
  
Raphael just looked at the lesser angel until she stopped talking, squirming beneath the weight of his Grace and his Glory. “All that matters,” Raphael said slowly, as if speaking to a particularly dull witted child, “is what she can do for us, and I want her _out of here_ and somewhere we can unlock what she has in that head of hers. Do I make myself understood, Nathaniel?”  
  
Raphael never raised his voice; he never needed to. Nathaniel dropped her gaze and murmured a soft noise of agreement. Raphael studied his sister a moment, searching for any signs of rebellion, some proof that this one would have to be made an example of, but Nathaniel showed only quiet obedience. Raphael’s will would be done. The archangel left without a word; there was much work to be done, things that actually required his full attention.  
  
Nathaniel did not move until after the archangel was well and truly done. Then she slumped against Donna Temple-Noble’s desk as the woman, possibly the most important woman on the planet, continued to type, completely oblivious as her fingers flew across the keyboard.  
  
Nathaniel didn’t notice one of her fellow cherubim breezing through, drawing together the woman repairing the photo copier and the man delivering water for the water cooler. Maybe if she had, nothing would have ended up on fire.  
  
But maybe not.


	2. Part 1

Until a few months ago, Dean Winchester had never given much thought to grass. For the vast majority of his life, grass had been Someone Else’s Problem, like Cleaning Motel Rooms and Taking out the Trash On Garbage Day. Dean’s life had consisted of cheap motel rooms and the Impala, with a smattering of stays at Bobby’s, where car parts, gravel, and dirt overwhelmed any grass that might have dared to come near the house. Grass was the stuff you cut through to get to the body you needed to salt and burn. It wasn’t something you should have to take _care_ of.  
  
 _Cutting_ grass hadn’t actually been that big a shock to Dean; tune in to a dom-com and sooner or later the wife would be shrieking at _someone_ to cut the grass. But the mulching, the weeding, all the effort that went in to keeping the grass thick and green and uniform, _Jesus!_ And God help him if he didn’t keep things up to the standards of the local Home Owner’s Association. It was almost enough to make Dean long for the days of Victor Hendrickson -- at least the FBI agent had had a reason to be such a dick. The head of the Home Owner’s Association was just _petty_.  
  
Sometimes, before he could stop himself from thinking about it, Dean wondered if Sam had any idea what he was getting his big brother in to when he’d made Dean promise to go to Lisa’s when it was all over.  
  
Dean was starting to suspect demonic possession or something. Next time the bastards came by, he was spiking the lemonade with holy water.  
  
Dean glared at the little yellow dandelions that dotted the back yard --mocking him -- as if he could make them wither and die _just_ by looking at them.  
  
Before Dean had moved in, Lisa had subscribed to a lawn care service. Dean, being _Dean_ and therefore needing _something_ to do, had taken it over, thinking that taking care of the lawn would be easy.  
  
Not one of his brighter moments, he was willing to admit.  
  
He was giving serious thought to putting in one of those Zen rock garden things (and _oh,_ wouldn’t that drive the Home Owner’s Association out of their tiny little minds!) when he heard it. The sound that had been missing from Dean’s life for the last four months, the sound he’d been straining to hear since that last drive in the Impala.  
  
The sound of wings.  
  
For a moment, Dean’s whole world stopped. He was standing in Lisa’s yard, waging war against dandelions, living the Apple Pie life like he’s promised Sam, and _now_ he was hearing the sound of wings again.  
  
“And where the hell is _this_ , then?”  
  
Dean turned, and there stood Castiel in his tan overcoat and his rumpled suit and that dumb blue tie tied wrong, being berated by a red haired woman in what Lisa would have called Business Casual that looked a little bit singed. She was right up in Cas’s personal space, poking him in the chest as she demanded to know _what_ was going on, _where_ she was, and who the bloody hell Cas was. She sounded like something out of those British TV shows Lisa watched on cable sometimes.  
  
“Be calm, Donna Temple-Noble. You are safe.”  
  
Castiel’s words did nothing to calm the woman down. In fact, it only seemed to make her angrier.  
  
“Safe? You call this _safe_?” She pounded a fist against Castiel’s chest and yelped, shaking her newly injured hand, but she clearly wasn’t going to let _that_ slow her down. “You set that office on fire! You kidnapped me! We… we were _there_ and now we’re _here_ , wherever the hell _here_ is!”  
  
“Cicero, Indiana,” Castiel informed the red haired woman calmly. “And I did _not_ set that office on fire; that was Nathaniel. It is an unfortunate habit of-”  
  
“ _Why_ are we in Indiana?” A pause. “ _How_ are we in Indiana?” The woman Cas had called Donna was nose to nose with the angel then, taking advantage of the high heels she wore to make up the difference in their heights. Cas actually took a step back, turning towards Dean with a pleading look in those big blue eyes.  
  
Dean couldn’t help himself; he grinned. “Hey, Cas. Gonna introduce me to your new friend?”  
  
Amazingly, both Cas and Donna turned the exact same thunderous expression on Dean. “If I don’t start getting answers,” Donna hissed, “I’m gonna start putting some pretty bruises on some pretty faces!”  
  
“I promise,” Castiel said, raising his hands and looking from Dean to Donna imploringly, “I will explain, if we can just go inside. This is not a conversation we want to be having out here.”  
  
“Oh, this is gonna be good.” Dean was still grinning. He was sure Castiel was about to drop something life-changingly huge in his lap, and Dean _did not care._  
  


***

  
  
Castiel accepted neither the beer Dean offered, nor any of the tea Lisa made when she saw that they had guests. Donna took the tea, her temper cooling down from shrill to merely testy. Lisa made a cup of tea for herself and joined them in the living room as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be there, listening to Dean discuss the possible end of the world with an angel. Dean didn’t protest Lisa’s presence, so Castiel held back a suggestion that she be elsewhere.  
  
“Raphael wants to restart the Apocalypse,” Castiel told the three humans, not waiting to be prompted. Dean’s expression turned grim, and Donna looked like she was about to demand that Castiel stop talking crazy when Lisa leaned over and filled the older woman in.  
  
Donna responded to Lisa’s talk of angels and the narrowly averted end of the world with a flat “What?”  
  
Castiel was still processing the fact that Dean had _told_ Lisa all of it. Dean’s policy with women, until that point, had been one of supreme secrecy, if not outright lies.  
  
“ _You’re_ an angel. An _actual_ angel.” Donna shoved Castiel’s shoulder, pulling him from his thoughts. “Prove it.”  
  
“All you have seen today isn’t enough?” Castiel growled back, letting just a bit of his true voice leak through, making the windows rattle.  
  
Unimpressed, Donna told him, “No.”  
  
Dean grinned, giving Castiel’s shoulder a gentle shove. “I like her. Now, why is she here?”  
  
Castiel spoke quickly, raising his voice a little each time Donna tried to interrupt. “Despite all appearances to the contrary, Donna is host to something very old and powerful, and Raphael wishes to use that to restart the Apocalypse and to wipe out myself and my followers.” He grimaced as Donna’s foot impacted on his shin and the woman yelped in pain. “Please stop doing that.”  
  
“ _You_ stop talking about me like I’m not here, Scruffy!” Donna rose to her feet, a not-so-towering bundle or rage. “I want a phone, _now_. Better still, _take me home_. My family needs to know I’m alright! Shaun’ll be worried sick!”  
  
Castiel intercepted the cell phone Lisa had produced from her back pocket. “Returning you now would put your family in unimaginable danger. Raphael will not stop coming for you now, and he will not hesitate to hurt them in order to get to you.”  
  
Lisa held up a hand as her expression turned stormy, leaving Castiel suddenly confronted with two angry women. “So you decided to bring her here?” There was a dangerous undercurrent in Lisa’s tone that told Castiel that he still had much more explaining to do, and that he had best do it quickly. Humans. They never ceased to amaze Castiel. Lisa, knowing full well what Castiel was and what he was capable of, was ready to remove him from her own if he had brought danger there. Dean put a hand on Lisa’s arm, and the pair exchanged one of those wordless looks that somehow managed to contain whole conversations. Lisa settled back down, but it was clear she wasn’t the least bit happy.  
  
“I placed protections on this house,” Castiel informed them, “to prevent any demons that might decide to exact a little revenge on Dean from finding him. When Raphael decided to wage his war, I added angelic protections as well. This place is perhaps the _only_ safe place -- this will all go _much_ faster if people would _stop interrupting me_!” the angel snapped, moving his ankles out of range of Donna’s feet.  
  
“I’ll stop interrupting when you start making sense,” Donna retorted tartly.  
  
“I’ll use smaller words,” Castiel assured her flatly. “You are in danger. This is the only place on the planet where you will be safe, this is the only man in the world I trust to _keep_ you safe.” He gestured towards Dean. “Do you understand? Does _everyone_ understand?” He looked from face to face. Lisa, guarded and wary. Donna, scared and angry. Dean…  
  
Happy. Like he’d just been pointed at a monster after weeks without a hunt. Even at the worst, when things were darkest, Dean was eager for a hunt. It gave him something to focus on that he could actually handle instead of the too-big horrors that surrounded him. Only _Dean_ would think of this as easy compared to everything else around him.  
  
Castiel might have loved the hunter for that, if he hadn’t wanted to wipe that grin off Dean’s face.  
  


***

  
  
Not for the first time, the Doctor stood in the wreckage and cursed himself. Admittedly, this time he wasn’t directly responsible; even the fires had all been put out well before the blue Police Box had materialized amidst the wreckage. None of the men and women who had worked in the office remained to see the doctor emerge, unusually quiet in that moment. He was followed by his companions soon after, neither of them willing to break the silence. Rory wandered over to a scorched beige wall, running his fingers across the deep, smooth gouge that ran across it for nearly three feet.  
  
“What happened here, Doctor?” Amy asked, setting a chair to rights. Something had sheered the back clean off.  
  
“Someone has made a very grave mistake,” the Doctor said calmly. “They have taken a very dear friend, and we are going to get her back. May Heaven help _anyone_ who gets in my way.”  
  
Rory felt goose pimples rise on his arms as he followed the Doctor back to the TARDIS.  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, in a spot just to the left of the material plain, the cherub Nathaniel moaned. “Raphael is going to kill me!”


	3. Part 2

Amy perched on the TARDIS controls next to the Doctor, watching him as he _fiddled_. That was the only way she could describe it; he was fooling about with a machine that she’d never seen before, and he was barely talking. That was the part that was actually worrying Amy; when the Doctor was talking, it meant things would be alright. He might be trying to confuse everyone around him, he might be flying by the seat of his pants, but it _would_ work out in the end. But when the Doctor went quiet, that was when he got scary, and Amy remembered that he was more than a collection of gangly limbs, tweed, and bow ties. He was something unimaginably old and not really human, and he’d wiped out whole species before.  
  
And now someone had been stupid enough to kidnap one of the Doctor’s friends. The Doctor had assured her and Rory that Donna was still alive (so they were on a rescue mission instead of one of strict vengeance), despite the fact that the office she’d been working in had been halfway burned down by the time they’d arrived.  
  
Normally it amused Amy that for a time traveler, the Doctor really was rubbish at showing up in time to keep the trouble from actually happening.  
  
Any didn’t know that much about Donna Noble; she’d been the Doctor’s companion once, like Amy, but he’d been forced to erase her memory and leave her behind; for her own safety, the Doctor had assured her, but just thinking about it had set her guts twisting unhappily, her mind filled with thoughts that she didn’t want to have.  
  
Apparently, the Doctor’s plan to keep Donna safe hadn’t worked out as well as he’d hoped.  
  
“So what’s this gonna do, then?” Amy asked, leaning closer.  
  
The Doctor pushed his goggles up into his hair and put his sonic screwdriver down. “It’s going to help me find Donna. They hid her, they muddied the trail, but I. Will. Find. Her.”  
  
The device looked like the unholy love child of a camera phone and a vacuum cleaner.  
  
“Is that _my phone_?” Amy asked suspiciously, digging in to her pockets only to find them empty. “It is!”  
  
“I’ll replace it.” The Doctor proceeded to plug Amy’s purloined and rebuilt cell phone in to the TARDIS consol.  
  
“Who do you think did it, Doctor? The Daleks? Cybermen?” Amy mentally ran down the list of enemies the Doctor had and found it disturbingly long. “Autons? Sontarans? Um… Slitheen?”  
  
“Angels.”  
  
“But I thought the Weeping Angels were all destroyed.” Amy felt a cold chill run down her spine. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could still _see_ them, stone hands reaching out to take hold of her; on those nights, Amy didn’t sleep.  
  
“Different angels,” the Doctor said gently. “ _Very_ different. These angels are Tran-dimensional energy beings. In order to operate on this level of reality, they borrow human bodies, supposedly with the original owner’s consent. _Normally_ we leave each other alone -- I do my thing, they do theirs.” The Doctor lifted his sonic screwdriver again. “I don’t much care for them, and the feeling is mutual. They’re very powerful and very old, and they don’t like for anyone to be as powerful as them, or better. Normally, they’re too busy squabbling amongst themselves to even do that much on Earth, but now…” He frowned.  
  
“But what would they want with Donna?”  
  
The Doctor didn’t look up. “Donna has the mind of a Time Lord locked up inside of her. So much power, too much for a human to handle.” He swallowed. “It’ll kill her if they unlock it, Amy. Not that they would care.” The Doctor finally looked at Amy, grim faced and just a little angry.  
  
“You’ll save her. You’re the Doctor, it’s what you do.” Amy smiled at the Doctor. He didn’t smile back, and the cannibalized phone started to buzz. Instantly, it had the Doctor’s full attention. “See? Found her already.”  
  
“Yes,” the Doctor agreed. “And now we get her back.”  
  


***

  
  
“Call me when this is over, okay?” Lisa said, reaching up slightly to adjust the collar of Dean’s flannel shirt, a worried expression locked in place on her face. It had been there since just after the 6 o’clock news, which had been dominated by what authorities believed to be a terrorist attack on a London office building. Casualty reports were still coming in. Frantic, Donna had once again demanded a phone and Cas, in full on Dick Angel Of the Lord mode (Dean had not missed _that_ side of the angel at all) had ended up putting Donna to sleep to stop her from breaking her hand on his face.  
  
That was when Lisa had pulled Dean aside, that look on her face.  
  
“I’m taking Ben with me to my sister’s. I know your friend said that the house was safe, but-”  
  
“We should be the ones to leave,” Dean had insisted, ready to bundle Cas and Donna into the Impala and hit the road, but logic had ended up ruling the day. The house had protections, no one was after Lisa and Ben, and Castiel had promised to personally escort them to Lisa’s sister’s place and put protections up there. Dean didn’t like the idea of letting Lisa and Ben out of his sight, but months of living with the woman had taught him to pick his battles carefully with her.  
  
And as much as he hated to admit it, part of him was glad to have Lisa leaving. This wasn’t her world, and people who hadn’t been in on the whole hunter thing usually did the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time when confronted with the things that went bump in the night, like Lisa had with the whole changeling thing a few years ago. More than anything, Dean wanted Lisa and Ben _safe_ , and they could very well put _themselves_ in danger in the heat of the moment.  
  
He wished he’d done more to teach them, but he’d also promised Sam that he’d be normal, and teaching people exorcisms and angel banishing sigils _wasn’t_. Now Dean was letting that normal life drive away without much of a fight.  
  
Ben trudged past Dean, shooting him a deeply resentful look as he loaded his suitcase in to the back of Lisa’s SUV. Ben wasn’t at all happy about having his life interrupted by a weirdo in a trench coat and a woman who would _not_ stop bitching.  
  
“You watch out for your mom,” Dean instructed Ben gravely. He’d done his best to explain what was going down, and Dean was pretty sure Ben understood how serious things were, but the boy was still just _that_ , a boy. And when you’re a kid, you don’t always care that some angel named after a Ninja Turtle wants to end the world, beyond how it’s screwing up your own life.  
  
Lisa leaned in and kissed Dean, a dry press of soft lips against his own that ended before Dean could make it something deeper. “Take care of yourself, Dean,” Lisa said, resting her palm against dean’s cheek.  
  
Dean forced a laugh. “You say that like you’re not gonna see me again.” Lisa’s expression turned into an almost-smile, and she kissed him again.  
  
“Are we going or what?” Ben called, climbing in to the back of the SUV. Cas had already laid claim to the front. He’d been inspecting al the useless crap on the dashboard for the last several minutes, while Lisa and Ben stowed their luggage away. Lisa rolled her eyes and kissed Dean one more time before climbing in to the SUV and driving away.  
  
Dean didn’t even wait until Lisa, Ben, and Cas were out of sight; he got right to work setting up his own wards. Sure, Cas had put up some powerful angel mojo to keep this place safe, and Dean didn’t doubt them, but he wanted things he could see, things he’d put own two hands.  
  
Dean knew he’d have to clean it up before Lisa and Ben came home, but he felt a small swell of accomplishment as he drew the wards around the doors and windows. He hadn’t actually had the chance to do this kind of stuff often; only when Bobby had conscripted him into helping refresh the protections on his own house. You couldn’t go around drawing on motel room walls; besides, some of the stuff he was doing required that it be done in a place where people lived _all the time_ , even if Dean wasn’t really sure why. Sam had tried to explain it to him more than once, but Dean had dismissed it as useless information -- he’d never expected to settle in one place long enough to ever need it.  
  
In the back of his head, he could hear Sam babbling an explanation of how and why the protections worked, and the right way to draw this rune or that sigil -- _Downward stroke, Dean, and don’t forget the line that goes above is supposed to be done right to left._ This had always been more Sam’s thing, and he’d really loved it; digging through some musty book for a new way to keep the things in the dark at bay.  
  
There were a few moments when the protective spells blurred in front of Dean’s eyes, but he was still finished before Donna woke up from her angelically induced nap.  
  
“I’m gonna strangle him with his own tie!”  
  
“Well aren’t you just a bundle of sunshine,” Dean muttered as Donna stormed around the house, going upstairs briefly once she‘d assured herself that there was only Dean on the first floor, and that Castiel wasn‘t doing something like hiding in the kitchen or the back yard. Dean followed her up, then back downstairs mostly because it was the most interesting thing going on at the moment.  
  
“See how cheerful _you_ are when you get dragged halfway across the world by a mad man in a stupid coat,” Donna snapped, taking the kitchen by storm and filling the kettle with water.  
  
“Oh trust me, I get it,” Dean told her. “You have no idea how much I get it. But Cas is right -- don’t tell him I said that -- and as soon as this is over, you go home.” He grinned, and Donna scowled back.  
  
“Pretty Boy, I trust you and your scruffy buddy about as far as I can throw you.” With amazing speed, Donna was in Dean’s personal space, poking him in the chest with a long, pink painted fingernail. She didn’t seem to give a damn that Dean had a good six inches and probably a hundred pounds of mostly muscle. It was kinda being attacked by one of those little dogs that looked like miniature Wookies. “I want. To call. My husband.”  
  
“No,” Dean drawled, gearing up for a good old fashioned shouting match. Then he heard the noise. Dean didn’t know how to describe it -- not like the beat of angel wings, but not actually all that different. A rush of air, with a distinct hint of something mechanical.  
  
A man didn’t live as long as a hunter as Dean had without learning to pick up on sudden changes in his environment. Donna noticed it too, her expression going from angry to a strange mix of confused and a little sad as she turned towards the back yard, where the noise was coming from.  
  
“Bedroom,” Dean ordered, his voice low and urgent. He’d put an extra set of protections around the master bedroom, every ward and charm he could remember, wishing all the while for Bobby’s panic room. For a moment, Dean wondered why Cas hadn’t taken Donna to Bobby’s, but he pushed that thought away to be dealt with when Dean had the time and inclination to really think about it. Like the 12th of Never.  
  
Donna, thankfully, let Dean steer her towards the make-shift safe room he’d made of the master bedroom. “If shit goes wrong, you climb out the window and you _run_ , and you pray to Castiel as loud as you can. He’ll find you. Do _not_ break the salt line when you’re in there, clear?”  
  
Donna was surprisingly quiet, not even fighting as Dean steered her up the stairs and into the bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind her. Then he picked up his shotgun from one of decorative tables that littered the house and usually served no real purpose beyond holding flowers and looking pretty, along with his only real ace in the hole -- the sword of an angel, taken when he‘d killed Zachariah in Van Nuys. The slender, silvery blade had been sitting in the trunk of the Impala, just another memento of the life Dean was supposed to be leaving behind. He’d given the Colt to Bobby, and he wished there was time to get it back as he headed back downstairs. But trouble was already in the back yard, in a big blue telephone booth.  
  
“Cas, get your feathered ass back here, we got incoming… blue boxes. Oh-kay.” Dean studied the blue box, sitting in the middle of the back yard as if it had always been there. The white lettering around the top of the box proclaimed it a Police Box -- _What the hell is a Police Box?_ \-- and when the dark blue doors opened, out stepped a gangling man with brown hair that flopped in his face and a chin that looked like it could break down doors, dressed like an old history professor in tweed and a bow tie. And the man didn’t look the least bit happy.  
  
Dean knew the feeling.


	4. Part 3

The shotgun came as a bit of a surprise to Rory. While the Doctor hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with details about the angels, Rory _had_ gotten the impression that they were more Up Close and Smitey in their fights, rather than being the type to dress like a lumberjack and haul around a shotgun. His grip tightened slightly around the Bowie knife he’d dug up from the TARDIS’ storage, the feel of it disturbingly comforting. Rory wasn’t to be fight any angels that day, but he also wasn’t ready to walk in to this unarmed. The plan was that the Doctor would serve as a decoy, getting all the angelic attention while Rory and Amy snuck about and rescued Donna, but Rory knew all to well how often things actually went according to plan.  
  
The house was also a surprise. You just didn’t expect angels to hang out in little two story houses in the suburbs. Maybe fancy hotels in big cities, or big, fancy mansions in the middle of nowhere, or cathedrals. Something like that.  
  
“Go,” the Doctor said, raising his sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the glass patio doors as he flicked it on. They shattered impressively, along with the rest of the windows _and_ the overhead lights, making the man with the shotgun scramble for cover before he got sliced to pieces by the glass. Amy darted out of the TARDIS, and Rory followed, moving fast and keeping low. Looking through the broken windows, Rory didn’t see anyone else in the house, but he knew that didn’t really mean much. The Doctor’s friend _was_ in there somewhere, probably under guard, which was why Rory had the knife.  
  
Rory had considered bringing a sword, but ultimately he’d opted for something easier to conceal in case they had to leave the Doctor; the Time Lord had impressed on Rory that getting Donna away from the angels was Priority One, no matter how.  
  
The third surprise of the day came when Rory and Amy came around to the front of the house and found three men in dark suits there, standing too still to be human as they gazed up at a second story window, from which a young woman, also clad in an ill fitting dark suit, dangled. Whoever was inside the house was in the process of beating the woman about the head and shoulders with a broom, making it very hard for her to stutter out “Be not afraid!” before losing her grip and dropping to the ground, landing impossibly lightly on her feet.  
  
“I’m _not_ afraid! I’m bloody furious! You nearly set me on fire!” A table lamp followed the woman in the dark suit down, chattering on her head without doing more than making her MIB companions laugh.  
  
“Why do they always blame _me_?” the woman whined as she brushed the bits of shattered lamp off her hair and ended up looking right at Rory and Amy. “Oh, _you two_. Get them!”  
  
A night stand came tumbling out the window, succeeding in knocking the woman off her feet, as the three men in suits turned on Rory and Amy with cold eyes and stony faces. Rory stepped between Amy and the men black, Bowie knife at the ready. One of the men laughed, a low and awful sound, a slender silver blade appearing in his hand from nowhere. “The monkey thinks it’s going to fight us. Adorable.”  
  


***

  
  
The man with the shotgun, the Doctor knew, was not an angel. But he did have the mark of one, like something pulsing beneath his freckled skin. The Doctor hadn’t seen anything like that since before the slaughter of the Nephilim. Under other circumstances, the Doctor would have been quizzing the man about _everything_ , but Donna was _far_ more important than the Doctor’s personal curiosity. By now, Am and Rory would be staging Donna’s rescue, either by leading her away or by carrying her out, if the failsafe had already kicked in.  
  
The Doctor ducked behind the TARDIS as the shotgun roared. “Guns,” the Doctor muttered. “Always with the guns. Well.” He came around the other side of the TARDIS, destroying the shotgun with a well aimed beam from his sonic screwdriver. The man with the angel mark swore loudly as his weapon fell apart in his hands, throwing the remains away and pulling out the angel sword he’d had tucked into his belt.  
  
The poor fool had no idea what his angelic lover had gotten him in to.  
  
“You do not want to do this,” the Doctor said as the human stepped past the broken glass. He handled the sword like he knew that the pointy end went in to the other guy, but with no real finesse. He was probably more used to something meant for chopping.  
  
“Oh yeah, I really do.” The smile on the man’s face was all teeth, with nothing even remotely kind behind it. This was a man used to violence, and the Doctor doubted anything he could say would convince him to stay his hand.  
  
The Doctor had come here ready for a fight, and he was perfectly willing to give it. The last Time Lord had been about to take that angel sword from the human when the angel finally put in an appearance, arriving in a rush of wings, overcoat flapping. The Doctor narrowly avoided being impaled by the angel, and the angel narrowly avoided having a sonic screwdriver do horrible things to is insides. Time Lord and angel broke apart, eyeing each other, waiting for the other to make the first move and giving the Doctor time to identify who he was dealing with.  
  
“Castiel,” the Doctor finally said calmly, but coldly.  
  
“Doctor.” The blue eyed angel’s voice was just as arctic as the Time Lord’s.  
  
“Janet! Brad! Rocky!” the human piped up in an exaggerated falsetto. Anyone else would have withered under the irritated glares of both Castiel and the Doctor, but he remained unrepentantly cocky. “Who’s the guy I’m about to kill, Cas?”  
  
“This is the Doctor, Dean, and I doubt you’ll be killing him, today or any other.” Castiel’s eyes remained locked on the Doctor as he moved between the Time Lord and Dean.  
  
“And you’re the one who kidnapped my friend,” the Doctor murmured.  
  
“We did not!” Dean objected quickly, trying to push past Castiel, only to have the angel keep him back. The Doctor didn’t miss the suspicion that flashed across the human’s face, though.  
  
“We didn’t,” Castiel agreed.  
  
That was when something exploded in the front of the house, rattling everything as Amy and Rory came pelting around the side of the house. “Doctor!”  
  
Two more angels appeared, dressed in what had been neat, dark suits until they’d gotten shredded and burned. One angel was still trying to put a sleeve out, in fact. Both angels had their blades in their hands, one turning and slashing out at Rory, who deflected the longer blade with his own knife. The other one advanced on Castiel and Dean, malice clearly aforethought.  
  
“Ah, I see you lot are still engaged in your family squabbles,” the Doctor noted wryly.  
  
“Raphael will be pleased,” the angel on Castiel said smugly, even as Rory continued to fend off his own opponent, ignoring the Doctor completely. “I’m going to bring him your wings, traitor.” Typical angel, so certain of it’s superiority, predicting victory far ahead of time. “And your little pet’s head!” Castiel’s opponent tried darting around Castiel to Dean, only to have his blade deflected with Dean’s stolen angel sword before Castiel grabbed the angel by the back of his neck and threw him away from Dean and towards the Doctor. The enemy angel stabbed blindly at the Time Lord, only to get a face full of sonic screwdriver, with the setting powerful enough to disorient even so powerful a being.  
  
Of course, that _would_ be the moment Donna Temple-Noble came pounding down the stairs, shouting, “That _other_ nutter from the office just set the house on fire!” She stopped dead in her tracks even as the fire alarms shrieked and flames spread rapidly through the house, surveying the tableau they all made; the Doctor, the angels, Rory, Amy and Dean. For a moment, Donna’s eyes met the Doctor’s. For a moment, she almost remembered.  
  
Then the failsafe kicked in, and the Doctor’s hearts broke as she collapsed. The angel that had tried to attack Castiel and had just been disoriented by the Doctor decided that this was the perfect time to go in and _take_ Donna, while she was unconscious and helpless. But whatever may have been done to the house, the protections still held, and the angel disappeared with a scream in a brief flash of light, even as Dean raced past, calling Donna‘s name. Castiel rushed the angel Rory had been holding off from behind, driving his angel blade up from just under his brother’s rib cage, pulling it out and letting the angel in the suit fall to the ground, wings burning in to the grass as he died. The Doctor watched the ancient thing pass with what little pity he could spare.  
  
For a moment, there was nothing but silence as Dean went back inside, grabbing the kitchen fire extinguisher along the way to push back the encroaching flames. Then there were sirens -- someone had called the fire department. Dean tossed away the extinguisher, realizing that there was no way to do more than delay the flames, and lifted Donna carefully, carrying her out to the back yard. “C’mon, Red, this is no time to play Sleeping Beauty!”  
  
“We need to go,” Rory said urgently. “There were two more and I don’t know where they went.”  
  
“Plus,” Amy added helpfully, “the house is kind of on fire.”  
  
Castiel turned to the Doctor as he wiped blood from his blade, his face an expressionless mask. “I believe our interests here are the same, Doctor.” The last remaining angel’s eyes went to the TARDIS, and the Doctor nodded in reluctant agreement. Castiel turned to Dean. “Bring Donna, we need to leave. Raphael and his followers know about this place now, they can find it again.”  
  
The Doctor opened the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers, ushering Amy in before him, Rory following. Behind him, he heard Dean ask, “How the hell are we supposed to fit in there?”  
  
In spite of everything, unseen by everyone, the Doctor smiled.  
  


***

  
  
“Oh, Tahariel,” Nathaniel whispered as she pulled some of the fire away from the house. She turned the flames on the empty vessel of her fallen brother, burning it away to nothing. Harahel had been sent away, dispatched by the wards that had kept them from entering the house and just _taking_ Donna, but he would recover, in time. Kutiel had run off when the house had caught fire and he’d been sliced by a lucky hit by one of the Doctor’s companions, the man called Rory, when he had made an attempt to take the woman Amy hostage. There was no doubt that he was already reporting this failure to Raphael; Nathaniel would have to work fast to keep Raphael from setting _her_ on fire for incompetence.  
  
She already had a new plan; Nathaniel liked to think that she was good at coming up with new plans in the face of the old ones falling apart like wet tissue paper. She’d thought to follow the Time Lord and his companions when Castiel had hidden Donna away, knowing that they would lead her to the woman. And now she had a new, better plan.  
  
With a quiet prayer, Nathaniel flew away.  
  
 _Father be with me, I need you now._


	5. Part 4

_Sam would have loved this thing._  
  
Dean sat on the floor next to the unconscious Donna Temple-Noble on the floor of a blue box that was way too big on the inside, and he thought of another red haired woman who’d once been so much more than human, and how badly returning to that state had fucked up her life. It was better than thinking of Sam, and how much he would have been geeking out. Donna hadn’t woken up yet, and according to the Doctor (“ _Just_ the Doctor,“ the geek had said when Dean had asked), she was going to stay drooling on Dean‘s flannel shirt, which had been repurposed as a pillow, because if she did wake up her head would explode. Castiel hadn’t been happy to hear that, and Dean could guess why.  
  
Anything that Raphael could use against Cas, Cas could use against Raphael.  
  
Only… exploding heads. Bad in a way that ranked right there with melting eyes out of heads, as far as Dean was concerned. Cas knew that, _respected_ that, unlike that dick Raphael.  
  
That, and there was the Doctor, who looked like the kind of son of a bitch who would start a fucking Apocalypse for someone he loved. Dean knew the type, and he was willing to bet he’d give any angel a hell of a fight.  
  
Dean preferred to think about potential apocalypses than think about how he was going to explain what had happened to Lisa.  
  
Cas and the Doctor had secluded themselves away from everyone else, talking in low voices that ceased whenever anyone got too close.  
  
The angel was being a secretive bastard again. Dean didn’t like that.  
  
The pretty red head sat down next to Dean and smiled, locking her arms around her legs as she glanced briefly at Donna. “So, you got any idea what’s going on?” she asked with one of those cute British accents that probably made guys buy her drinks the moment she opened her mouth. “Cause I’m a little lost.”  
  
Dean smiled back -- hey, a pretty girl smiles at him, he was _gonna_ smile back. It was the Dean Winchester way. “Well, the story _I_ got was that my buddy over there was rescuing Sleeping Beauty from being used the restart the Apocalypse. You?”  
  
“Old friend of the Doctor’s got snatched, time for us to ride to the rescue.” She extended a hand to Dean. “Amy Pond.”  
  
Dean raised the proffered hand to his lips with an exaggerated eyebrow wiggle, kissing the knuckles. “Dean Winchester.”  
  
“Rory Williams,” the gawky man lingering by the consol said, briefly taking his eyes off Castiel and the Doctor to look at Dean. “Her husband.” There was nothing angry in his tone, just a ‘just so you know’ kind of voice, like he had to do this a lot. Amy smiled and shrugged in a ‘yeah, what can you do?’ way, turning a little so that she could more easily look at Donna, smoothing the older woman‘s hair back.  
  
“Wouldn’t she be more comfortable in a bed?” Amy asked, raising her voice enough that there was no way either the Doctor or Castiel could possibly miss it.  
  
“I’d prefer Donna stay where I can see her, Amelia.”  
  
All the accents, it was like being in one of those British TV shows Lisa liked.  
  
Amy looked shocked, gaping at the Doctor as he returned to his hushed conversation with Castiel.  
  
“I don’t like this,” Rory said. He stood surprisingly still, the way John Winchester used to sometimes. At first glance, Dean wouldn’t have begged Rory for any kind of soldier, but this was shaping up to be a day fill of surprises. And hell, Dean had _seen_ guy hold off an angel not an hour ago.  
  
“Your friend always like this?” Amy asked.  
  
“Is _yours_?”  
  
“No!” Now Amy was being defensive, which told Dean a lot.  
  
“Sometimes,” Rory said at the same time, which told Dean even more.  
  


***

  
  
The Doctor didn’t even try to be anything but when he spoke to Castiel. “I wasn’t aware that your kind was in the business of making deals.”  
  
Castiel met the Time Lord’s eyes, uncowed by his anger and decidedly unimpressed. “I’m trying to stop the Apocalypse from being restarted by Raphael, who will be perfectly happy to chase Donna to the ends of the universe in order to get her. If you would rather not help, feel free to drop us off. Sioux Falls, if you don’t mind.” Castiel turned away from the Doctor, mentally ticking off the seconds. He was at three when the Doctor spoke again.  
  
“You’re sure this wall of yours will hold?”  
  
Castiel had rarely had cause to deal with the Time Lords of Gallifrey, and when he had, he’d found them arrogant to the point of being unbearable. He’d never heard one sound _desperate_ before. “I am. The Time Lord part would remain sealed, but she would be able to remember the rest of what you tucked away. And she will be better able to protect herself if she is _not_ unconscious.”  
  
“I’d be taking away the life she has now,” the Doctor pointed out sadly. “How could she go back, knowing what’s out there?”  
  
“Very easily,” Castiel said, watching Dean out of the corner of his eye, “if that’s what she wants.”  
  
“I want her to be happy,” the Doctor sighed.  
  
“I know.”  
  
That got a knowing smile out of the Doctor, eyes flickering for a moment to Dean. “Ah.” Castiel’s jaw clenched, but the Doctor said nothing further on the subject of Dean Winchester. The Doctor made a noise that could only be made by something unbearably old, and he nodded. “Alright.”  
  
“She’s probably going to slap you when she wakes up,” Castiel noted.  
  
“Oh yes.”  
  


***

  
  
Donna Temple-Noble woke up on an unfamiliar floor, looking up at a face that she was getting to know a little _too_ well. “Scruffy,” she growled.  
  
He backed away, just enough to be outside of her reach, like he was fully expecting her to slap him. “Hello, Donna.”  
  
Castiel was edged out of Donna’s line of sight by a gangly young man with floppy brown hair that fell in his face even after he pushed it out of the way. Unlike the angel, no one had stolen this man’s razor In fact, it looked like when he’d finished with his chin, he’d gone after his eyebrows. The new man looked scared and worried and maybe just a little bit hopeful, like a puppy hoping for a treat but expecting a kick. Donna didn’t know the face, but she knew those eyes, so sad and lonely and old. “Doctor,” she said, feeling like the breath was being driven out of her.  
  
“Hello, Donna.” The Doctor smiled sadly as he helped Donna sit up. The world spun dangerously for a moment as Donna reoriented herself, both the change of position and the changes within her own head. Memories crashed together like the sea against a rocky coastline -- _like that moon that was all oceans except for a few mountains thrusting out like islands_ , she thought -- confusing and disorienting and utterly world changing. The Doctor’s had rested lightly on the middle of her back, steadying her.  
  
“You redecorated,” Donna murmured, looking around the TARDIS consol room. She ignored everyone and everything but the Doctor. There was time for scruffy angels and their pretty boys, and new ginger girls and men with impressive noses later. She grabbed hold of the Doctor and pulled him in to a crushing hug. “God, you’re still skinny! Don’t you eat?” Donna thrust the Doctor back to arm’s length, giving him a shake and ignoring his murmured ‘Still not ginger, either’. “I should strangle you with that stupid bow tie!”  
  
Donna was aware of tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. “Bow ties are cool,” the Doctor protested weakly.  
  
Donna sniffled. “No, Skinny, they _aren’t_.”  
  
“It’ll grow on you,” the young red head told Donna, drawing her attention.  
  
“This the new model, then?” Donna asked with mock anger. The Doctor still flinched.  
  
“As if anyone could replace you,” he said gently, cupping Donna’s face in his hands.  
  
Castiel cleared his throat pointedly, earning himself a death glare from Donna as she blinked back her tears. “Shove it, Scruffy, we’re trying to have a moment, here!”  
  


***

  
  
Hell was not a truly physical place. Much like Heaven, it was perceived through the lenses of the souls that filled it, and each soul saw it differently. This was true even of the demons. For all their power, they were still small, limited things. This was one of Nathaniel’s three advantages.  
  
The second was that, as angels went, Nathaniel was a small thing -- a cherubim, considered little better than the Cupids who shared her rank. Thus, she was easily missed in the face of greater powers. While her more impressive Seraph brothers rattled their swords and made a fuss elsewhere, Nathaniel was able to move about relatively unmolested through Hell. She hardly even needed to suppress her Grace.  
  
Nathaniel’s third advantage was that she knew _exactly_ where she was going. The last time angels had come to Hell, in search of the Righteous Man, it had taken a whole garrison years just to _find_ Dean Winchester, fighting off demons all the while. But there was only one place Sam Winchester could be.  
  
The Cage.  
  
One could argue that the whole of Hell was meant to be Lucifer’s cage, but The Cage was something special, made to contain the overwhelming power of archangels. Inside, Michael and Lucifer were locked in combat, making the Cage easily found. And while they fought, neither Michael nor Lucifer would be bothered to notice a lowly Cherubim.  
  
The Cage was not unguarded, even with everyone else rushing to deal with the angels storming the gates. Crowley had chosen carefully when he’d stepped up to fill the power vacuum left by Lucifer’s imprisonment; demons loyal to their own best interests, who enjoyed their new place in Hell’s hierarchy. But the demons were blinded and deafened by the battle of the archangels. What was Nathaniel in the wake of that? It was like trying to see the light from a torch at high noon. Nathaniel’s second advantage at play again, also letting her slip past the bars of the Cage. It was a construct that was as much an _idea_ as a physical cage, never meant to hold something as inconsequential as a cherubim. Or a human.  
  
 _Please, Father, let me take him and go._  
  
Nathaniel couldn’t help but be in awe of her brothers as they battled. Michael was as magnificent as a storm sweeping across the grassy plains, and even fallen, Lucifer was the most beautiful of the angels.  
  
Caught between the warring brothers were two small beings, their vessels. The sons of John Winchester.  
  
Nathaniel paid Adam no mind. Dean Winchester would not give up Donna for the sake of a half brother who was a near stranger. But for Sam, he’d slit the woman’s throat, if that’s what was called for.  
  
For once, the universe seemed to be working in Nathaniel’s favor; Lucifer remained too distracted by Michael to notice as Nathaniel cut Sam free. She did not count on her luck holding much longer, so the moment Sam was free, she took hold of the human and fled as fast as her wings could carry her. No longer bothering to suppress her Grace, Nathaniel burned a path out of Hell. It would be centuries before the demons would be able to put the angelic fires out.  
  
In the Cage, Lucifer roared.  
  
In the corner of Hell Crowley had claimed for his “office”, the new King of Hell watched his Hell burn, and he seethed.  
  
“Find them,” he said. “Bring them to me. Whole enough to answer questions, but anything else is negotiable.”  
  


***

  
  
The sky Sam Winchester opened his eyes to see was a startling blue, with only a few wispy white clouds drifting aimlessly across. He inhaled sharply, lungs filling with crisp, clean air for the first time in months. A face filled Sam’s field of vision, a plump young woman with brown hair and eyes. “Please be sane.”  
  
“Wha-?” Sam struggled to sit up, and the woman knelt on the ground beside him.  
  
“I have just gone through a great deal, you see, to bring you here. It would be very bad if you did not have your wits about you.”  
  
Sam looked around as the woman babbled. He knew where he was -- Stull Cemetery. They were in the center of a circle of flattened dead grass and knocked over headstones. The air was warm, but there was a sharp hint to it that spoke of coming autumn. There was no one there except Sam and the woman.  
  
“Where’s Dean?”  
  
“Ah.” The woman frowned. “I don’t know.” She fiddled with the buttons of dark, slightly too large suit jacket, which Sam realized was actually smoldering in places. “That is partly why you are here now. He needs help, and I cannot find him.”  
  
She sat too still, her gaze was too intense and unblinking. Sam knew what that meant, and a part of him was pleased that he was still able to put things together so easily. “You’re an angel,” he said, and the woman nodded.  
  
“Nathaniel.” The angel rose to her feet, taking Sam’s hands and pulling him up with her. Sam towered over Nathaniel, but her angelic strength was more than enough to haul him around. “We must go. We were followed, and they will send others to look for us.” Sam braced himself to be teleported away, but strangely, he remained in the cemetery with the sun beating down on his shoulders. He looked around, then down at the angel, still holding on to his hands.  
  
“Oh _no_ ,” Nathaniel whispered, letting Sam’s hands go. She looked like hell, now that Sam was actually taking a good hard look at her, kind of like how Sam felt after a week long hunt with no sleep, or how Cas had looked towards the end, as his Grace had drained away and left him human. In the distance, Sam could hear the roar of car engines, racing closer with every second.  
  
Sam knew he should be asking more questions. Before he’d thrown himself into Hell with Lucifer, Michael, and Adam along for the ride, the angels had been gunning for him and Dean, with only Castiel standing by their side--  
  
\-- _oh God, a snap of his fingers and Cas blew up like a water balloon full of soup just the way Chuck had described_ \--  
  
and now there was this Nathaniel, grabbing him by the arm and urging him to _run_. Sam knew there were demons coming for them; he could remember the screams of the damned as he was yanked free from the cage, wrathful and pained and part of the mad jumble of memories that threatened to overwhelm Sam.  
  
A slap jerked Sam out of the rising memories, bringing him back to the here and now. Nathaniel had grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him down to her eye level, and Sam’s cheek _stung_. “Sam Winchester, we do not have time for this! We must _go_!”  
  
Sam needed to ask questions; he knew that. But first, he needed to survive.  
  


***

  
  
“Martha, I’ve got a location, outside of… Stull.” Mickey’s voice sounded clearly in Martha’s ear through the little headset. She turned the motorbike sharply, heading east and in the general direction of Lawrence, following the GPS co-ordinates Mickey rattled off. “Looks like it’s some kind of cemetery.”  
  
Martha laughed softly. “Great. Anything interesting there, Mickey?”  
  
“Just the usual crap you hear about old cemeteries, according to Google. You okay going there by yourself?”  
  
“Like I’ve got a lot of choice?” Martha sped up, racing down the highway. Mickey was laid up in the hotel room back in Topeka with a broken leg and cracked ribs from their last run in with the group they’d been tracking for the last two months.  
  
Martha didn’t know _what_ they were; when she and Mickey had started tracking them back in Cheddar, they’d been a bunch of middle aged prep school parents who had suddenly slaughtered their own children, then gone on a city wide rampage, demonstrating inexplicable strength and resistance to damage. The first time the duo had tried to stop the gang of murderous mums, half of them had vomited up black smoke and collapsed while the rest had fled. Only one of the women had still been alive, and she’d claimed to have been possessed by the devil before dying of absolutely massive internal injuries.  
  
Martha and Mickey had been chasing the gang across two continents ever since, each run in leaving them more and more frustrated. Shoot them, stab them, catch them and tie them up, and they vomited up that black smoke, leaving Mickey and Martha with dead or dying people who didn’t know what had happened to them. And the next time they’d catch up with the gang, there would be a new face taking the place of the abandoned one. No matter what they did, these so-called demons always came out ahead. Not even UNIT’s resources put a stop to them.  
  
Martha was ready to try giving the Doctor a call, much as she hated to admit it. She prided herself on being able to handle things without him, and she and Mickey really had managed just fine on their own until _this_ , even with the constant shifting of their relationship. Friends to lovers and back to just friends, they’d managed to keep the monsters at bay.  
  
“Stay safe, Martha.” Mickey’s tone was gentle, and tinged with worry.  
  
“It’s just a little recon. They’ll never even know I’m there.”  
  
“Oh _God_ , babe, why’d you have to go and jinx it like that?”  
  
Martha laughed again. “You know me, I like to live dangerously. That tracker still transmitting?”  
  
“Loud and clear. And _your_ tracker tells me you’re almost there.” Martha could hear Mickey moving about on his end, probably trying to shift his cast encased leg into a more comfortable position.  
  
Martha could see one of the cars her quarry had stolen for their cross country murder spree… mostly because it was on fire. It had been crashed through the chain link fence someone had put up in an effort to ward off trespassers and driven deeper in, along with the van Mickey and Martha had managed to get a tracker on to and a little sports car that was also burning merrily. As Martha drove closer, she saw that her merry band of mayhem makers had surrounded a pair of people, a woman in a poorly tailored dark suit and a much taller man in flannel and jeans standing back to back within a ring of flaming grass. Martha could just make out the man shouting in what she realized was Latin as she tore off her helmet. The woman had a long silver sword in her hands, and she held it like she knew how to use it.  
  
Martha drew her gun, training it on a young Asian man who had been a pre-school teacher before joining the band of killers. Beside the man in her sights, an old woman who’d poisoned the food being served at a community center’s grand opening screamed, an all too familiar cloud of black smoke erupting from her mouth. Martha expected the cloud to streak off into the sky like she’d seen dozens of times before. Instead, the cloud itself seemed to shriek as it was drawn down into the ground.  
  
“Crowley only needs them alive, for fuck’s sake! It’s goddamn _amazing_ what humans can live through!”  
  
“There’s no need for that kind of language,” one of the others said chidingly.  
  
Martha didn’t wait; she fired in to the Asian man, who was knocked off his feet, drawing the attention of the rest of the group to her. The former teacher sat up, smiling an awful, blood filled smile as he brushed at the holes that now filled his shirt, leaking blood. “Oh look. Someone we _can_ kill. Boys, Christmas has c-” He never got to finish; Martha put a bullet between his eyes, and he collapsed again in a cloud of black smoke.  
  
The woman with the silver sword moved fast, cutting the head off one of the circle of attackers in one smooth stroke, breaking the knee of another with a well placed kick that sent him to the ground with a sickening crunch of cartilage just before having the sword driven through his head. The tall man (and, Martha noted as she got closer, he _was_ tall, close to two meters) continued to chant in Latin as he guarded the swordswoman’s back. The fire, as if alive, kept flaring up in the dead grass between the man and anyone who tried to attack him, catching one woman on fire just before Martha shot her, too.  
  
When Martha looked back on it all later, she realized the whole fight only lasted a few minutes. Between the woman with the sword, Martha, and the chanting man, they made quick work of the monsters that had been plaguing Martha for months.  
  
The swordswoman staggered, and her companion put a steadying arm around her shoulders, both of them watching Martha warily, just as Martha watched them. Slowly, Martha lowered her gun without putting it away; Mickey would have pitched a minor fit over her lowering the gun at all after all they’d been through, but for all the swordswoman’s speed, she looked like she was about to fall over, and the man was unarmed and far enough away that she could shoot him long before he could get close enough to use his size to his advantage.  
  
“We need to go,” the swordswoman said urgently. “There will be more.”  
  
The man looked down at his companion, then to Martha with big brown puppy eyes. “Lady, I really hope you’re on our side.”  
  
 _So do I,_ Martha thought as she finally holstered her gun. “If that side’s ‘stop those black smoke things from killing people’, then yeah.” She approached them, extending her hand. “Martha Jones.”  
  
The man shook her hand firmly. “Sam Winchester.”


	6. Part 5

“I,” Mickey said, “have seen a lot of weird things in my life. Which is the _only_ reason I’m not calling the nice young men in the clean white coats, understand?”  
  
Sam stretched his legs out in front of him, nodding in acknowledgment of the truth of the other man’s words. Despite Nathaniel’s insistence that they needed to leave, Sam, the angel, and Martha had been forced to wade through two more waves of demons before Martha’s partner had arrived with a van. Sam blessed the fact that everyone was too tired to do more than climb in, saving him from having to explain anything until they reached the outskirts of Topeka.  
  
Then Martha had started asking him about demons, and it all started to spill out. Sam managed to keep to generalities about demons and angels until they got to the hotel; at that point he’d actually started repeating himself a bit, losing his train of thought out of sheer exhaustion. Mickey and Martha were set up in a _nice_ hotel, the kind Sam hadn’t made use of until he’s started going to Stanford, and hadn’t seen the inside of since he’d gone back on the road with Dean. Sam had half collapsed on one of the beds while the others had spread out around the room, Nathaniel perching by the window while Mickey and Martha took the table.  
  
“You do not believe,” Nathaniel said, sounding almost heartbroken.  
  
Mickey drummed his fingers on his cast as Martha cracked open a can of soda and looked anywhere but at the angel. Sam had a horrible feeling he knew what was about to happen, but he couldn’t see any way to really stop it. Hell, at the moment he wasn’t even sure his legs would support his weight if he tried to get up and come between the two.  
  
“Well, I think _you_ buy it,” Mickey said, completely unaware of the giant can of worms he was opening up.  
  
“ _I_ am an angel.”  
  
Sam had thought it better not the mention that. Clearly, Nathaniel felt otherwise.  
  
Martha and Mickey wore nearly identical expressions of skepticism as both of them studied Nathaniel. Sam was the first to admit that she wasn’t impressive looking, especially not in her burned and dirty suit. She looked like some college freshman who’d been bullied into someone else’s clothes for a job interview and had managed to run through a burning building along the way. Even Castiel had managed a kind of majesty most of the time, that certain aura hung about all the other angels Sam had met like a cloak. Nathaniel just looked annoyed and tired.  
  
“So that means you’re wearing someone else’s body?” Mickey asked. “Like those things we’ve been chasing all over the world?” He gave Martha a pointed look before glancing back to Nathaniel.  
  
The angel shifted her weight slightly. “My vessel gave her consent,” she said coldly.  
  
Martha looked from Mickey, who continued to look skeptical, to Sam, who could do nothing but nod. “That’s how they work,” he said, his heart twisting at the memory of Jimmy Novak. The girl Nathaniel had taken the body of probably had no clue what she was _really_ letting herself in for when she said yes. “And she is.”  
  
“Prove it,” Mickey challenged.  
  
Sam winced.  
  
Nathaniel rose from her perch, approaching Mickey with a dark expression and leaning in close. “I,” Nathaniel said, her tone still chilly, “do not need to prove myself to _you_. You may believe whatever you wish.” She returned to her perch with a little flounce, staring pointedly out the window as Mickey cleared his throat, sitting up a little straighter, and Sam let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.  
  
“What were you two doing in that cemetery, anyway?” Martha asked. “Why are the demons after you?”  
  
Sam licked his lips. “That’s a _long_ story.”  
  
“I pulled Sam out of Hell,” Nathaniel said, proving Sam wrong. Martha took a long pull from her soda, and Mickey pulled a face.  
  
“You _resurrected_ him?” Mickey asked incredulously.  
  
Nathaniel shook her head. “Resurrection is beyond my powers. But as Sam was alive when he went in to the Pit, I was able to bring him back out.” An almost-smile twitched across her face when she turned away from the window to look at Sam. He managed a weak smile in return.  
  
Mickey and Martha were starting to look at them both like they were crazy. Of course, Sam knew how crazy it sounded to someone who hadn’t _lived_ it. Hell, it sounded pretty damn crazy to him, and he _had_ lived it. Sam tried to come up with _something_ to say that would break the tension. Before his swan dive into the Pit, he would have been able to come up with something clever to put their minds at ease. But now his brain felt so scrambled, with nothing to distract him from the memories of Hell. And he _still_ had no idea what had happened to Dean, or how much trouble his brother was in this time, where he even _was_. He couldn’t even grill the angel about what had happened, not in front of Mickey and Martha.  
  
“You would think,” Nathaniel sniffed, “that someone who had spent time in an alternate reality would be a _bit_ more open minded. The universe is infinite in it’s miracles.”  
  
Silence ruled the room, broken by Mickey after a few moments. “Okay, you can read minds. Nothing I haven’t seen before.”  
  
Martha chuckled. “Careful, she might decide to smite you after all.”  
  
“This is ridiculous,” Nathaniel muttered, looking to Sam again. “I know that you would prefer your privacy in this matter but I am…” she looked down at her ruined suit, “diminished, _you_ are recovering, and _they_ are the only help we are going to find.” Nathaniel did her best to straighten her jacket, only to have the hem rip in her hands. “Sam and his brother Dean were central in stopping Lucifer and the archangel Michael from ending the world four months ago. Since then, the angels have split into two factions. The followers of the Archangel Raphael wish to get the Apocalypse back on track. The followers of Castiel do not.”  
  
“But I saw Cas _die_ ,” Sam said, straightening up. “I- Lucifer _killed_ him.”  
  
“He was restored -- no one actually knows how. Please do not interrupt, I am trying to explain.” Nathaniel unbuttoned her jacket, inspecting it critically. “Raphael has found something he can use, and Dean has become involved, putting him in far more danger than he realizes. Already Raphael’s forces hunt for him, and this time they have no reason to keep him alive when they catch him. I cannot find him, but you, Sam, you know him better than anyone. You know where he would go.” She turned to Martha and Mickey. “As for you… you will help us because the demons are just as interested in these events, and they _will_ be hunting us. You wish to put an end to them, and I can think of no better way to get them than to travel with the people they wish to find most. Until we can find Dean, Sam and I will make for excellent bait. Also, you might want to learn how to _actually_ stop them, rather than just slowing them down a little.” Nathaniel seemed pleased by this little bit of logic, judging by her little smile as the jacket in her hands restored itself to pristine condition.  
  
“What are you getting out of this?” Martha asked. “Why don’t you just get the other angels to help you?”  
  
“If I sent out a call for aid, the other side would also hear me, and they would find us. They would not hesitate to kill us all in the name of their cause.” Nathaniel folded her jacket up. “My brothers and sisters are killing each other because of Raphael’s war with Castiel, and I want it to _stop_. If I can find Dean, I can get the weapon into the right hands, and it can all _finally_ be over.” She swept her hands over the singed shirt she wore, returning it to pristine white. “Together, you once stopped the Apocalypse. Reunited, you will stop this war, too.”  
  
Sam’s guts twisted like he was about to be sick. “Dean was supposed to get out of this,” he mumbled, resting his head in his hands. The whole world seemed to tilt ominously, fading into darkness. Sam was dimly aware of Martha calling his name, and of Mickey cursing somewhere in the distance.  
  
“Oh. This may be more difficult than I first thought.” Sam heard Nathaniel say before the darkness swallowed him up completely.  
  


***

  
  
Donna grabbed Dean by the arm, pulling him along with her. “If I have to smell smoke much longer, I’m gonna be sick!” she announced. “C’mon, Pretty Boy.”  
  
“You keep this up, Red, and I’m gonna forget that you’re a lady.”  
  
Donna just snorted, pulling Dean out into a seemingly endless hallway. She lead Dean unerringly through a series of twists and turned, finally pushing open a door and marching inside, Dean still in tow.  
  
Dean had to stop then, marveling at the sheer size of the room in spite of himself. He was in what was probably the universe’s largest closet, and it was filled to bursting with every kind of clothing, _most_ of it impossibly tacky. “I’m sure there’s some flannel somewhere about,” Donna said, diving right in to the racks of clothing and grinning at Dean over her shoulder.  
  
“You’re a real laugh riot, Red.” Dean strode across the closet floor and started hunting through the racks for something he wouldn’t shoot himself for wearing. “Who the hell needs all this _crap_?“  
  
“People tend to build up clutter when they have a place to store it.” Donna help up a green t-shirt, eyeing it critically before she threw it at Dean’s head. “That’ll bring out your eyes, Pretty Boy.”  
  
Dean pulled the shirt off his head, laying it over his shoulders in case he couldn't find anything he actually liked. "I don't build up clutter," he murmured, holding a pink and yellow plaid shirt at arms length. "I need a lighter, this needs to die."  
  
"Well of course not. That wasn't your home," Donna said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Dean let the unholy pink flannel shirt drop, eyes narrowed as he looked at Donna. She met his gaze with a challenging expression, as if daring him to say she was wrong as she held a lavender tunic against her chest to see if it was close to the right size. Dean wanted to tell Donna she was wrong, or at least come up with an explanation for why he'd never put much of a stamp on the house he had shared with Lisa.  
  
Instead, he looked away, digging back into the racks of clothes until he found a pair of jeans that looked like they were about his size.  
  
"I think you two are gonna get on famously," Donna went on. "He never stops running either."  
  


***

  
  
Martha pressed an open bottle of water into Sam’s hands, helping him sit up. “When’s the last time you ate something?” she asked. Sam started to answer, then stopped, drinking from the bottle to cover his pause.  
  
“Four months,” Nathaniel supplied helpfully. “Not taking in to account that time moves differently in the Pit.”  
  
“Mickey’s getting food,” the Englishwoman said, thankfully _not_ asking any questions about it. “Until then…” she handed him an energy bar. “You scared your friend over there for a minute,” Martha said with a little smile.  
  
“I thought you were reliving Hell memories. Praise be to Father, humans have _astounding_ abilities to ignore things their minds were not meant to handle,” the angel said brightly.  
  
Sam smiled weakly. “Uh, thanks Nathie.”  
  
The angel looked puzzled as Sam slowly chewed his way through the energy bar. “‘Nathie’?”  
  
“I can’t really go around calling you ‘Nathaniel’,” Sam explained around a mouthful of peanuts and whatever they’d used to glue them together. “It’s a guy’s name. It‘s kinda weird. Besides, you don‘t really look like a Nathaniel.”  
  
“It’s my name.” Nathaniel’s expression remained puzzled as she cocked her head to one side.  
  
“‘Nathaniel’ is a bit of a mouthful,” Martha mused. “But I don’t think ‘Nathie’ would be better.”  
  
“I don’t like ‘Nathie’,” Nathaniel agreed, the name rolling off her tongue as if it tasted bad.  
  
Sam pursed his lips and frowned thoughtfully while Martha stifled a giggle with her hand. “Nath?” he suggested. “Nat?” He snapped his fingers and grinned. “Natalie!”  
  
“My name is _Nathaniel_.” Suddenly, the room seemed much warmer, and the angel much larger. “It means _Gift of God_. It was given to me by Father on the moment of my creation.” Nathaniel never raised her voice. She didn‘t need to. “When you are addressing me, you will call me Nathaniel, and nothing else. Am I clear?” Sam shifted uncomfortably on the bed as beside him, Martha’s body language went from relaxed to wary. It was, Sam thought, like dealing with Cas in the early days.  
  
Nathaniel, clearly satisfied that she had made her point, returned to looking out the window as she… the only way Sam could describe it was ‘deflated’. It wasn’t really what happened, but there was no other way to explain it. One moment, Nathaniel was something large and magnificent, the next she was small and ordinary and unremarkable.  
  
“Why’d Mickey go get the food?” Sam asked, his voice dropping to a near whisper in spite of himself; he knew Nathaniel could still hear him. Dean would have said something about scary nerd angels, but Dean was only God knew where. Only Sam’s faith in his brother’s ability to take care of himself was keeping Sam from leaving right then. Running in half cocked would only get them both killed.  
  
“Because I think Nathaniel was about to smite him,” Martha whispered back.  
  
[](http://s617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/fullmetalcute/?action=view&current=Nathaniel.jpg)  
  


***

  
  
Castiel watched as Dean paced around the control room, sniping back and forth with Donna. The Doctor folded up his long limbs and settled next to Castiel, smiling that far too knowing smile. “Reunions are nice,” he said casually. Castiel said nothing, so the Doctor, in the way of all things mortal, felt the need to fill the silence with chatter. “I’d have thought you wouldn’t let Dean out of your sight. You lot were always very protective of what you claimed.”  
  
Castiel was tempted to glare at the Time Lord, but decided that he wasn’t going to give the man the satisfaction. Still, anyone else seeing the expression on Castiel’s face would have dropped the subject. Not the Doctor. “He must be something special. But they all are, aren’t they?” His expression turned wistful as Donna accused Dean of being a pig, and he responded with oinking noises.  
  
Castiel watched the Doctor out of the corner of his eye. “As soon as this is over,” the angel said firmly, “Dean is going back to his life.” There it was again, that damn knowing smile. “We have a battle to plan, Doctor.”  
  
The smile stayed in place. “Of course.”  
  


***

  
  
“He’s taking too long,” Nathaniel said, giving voice to the thought that had been running through everyone’s minds.  
  
Neither Sam nor Martha protested that Mickey might be taking so long because of his broken leg. There was something in the air, and both the humans were too smart and too paranoid not to notice.  
  
“You feeling up to looking for Mickey, Nathaniel?” Sam asked, getting to his feet. Martha was already arming herself when the knocking started. Two knocks. A pause. Seven knocks. Another pause. One knock. Martha started to relax, reaching for the door handle, but Nathaniel caught her by the hand, and Sam shook his head. The knocks repeated in the same sequence, the one Mickey and Martha had agreed on before he’d left. Sam backed away from the door, peeking out the window that opened onto the fire escape. The parking lot below was full of people, and there was no _logical_ reason for it. Only a horrifying one. “Dammit,” Sam muttered.  
  
“We can’t leave Mickey,” Martha stated, the look on her face making it clear she was expecting a fight from them.  
  
“They’ll have taken him,” Nathaniel told her. “What’s on the other side of the door may look like him, but it’s just his flesh being used.”  
  
“But he’s still in there, right?” Martha asked, snatching up a tranq gun. She knew they’d have to abandon most of the gear in the room; God willing, they’d be able to get to the van and everything that was there. She’d hate to lose the bike and the gear in the van; it’d be nearly impossible to get replacements from UNIT or Torchwood. Even she could get only so much from them when she was freelance. But Mickey was even less replaceable. “I’m not going to just leave him.”  
  
“If we can get him, we can exorcize him,” Sam agreed.  
  
“Fine. Good. But we need to _go_ ,” Nathaniel said sharply, going to the window. “Grab him if you can. I’ll clear us a path.” She threw open the window and jumped out, letting out a noise that made the glass shatter as the demons on the other side of the door started breaking it down.  
  


***

  
  
"Do you want some pointers with that?"  
  
  
Dean stopped in mid thrust, the angel blade threatening to slip out of his grip again. Donna had abandoned him in the practice room after he'd growled at her the second time Dean had dropped the sword while trying to slice off the practice dummy's head. It was just that Dean was used to way more hacking, like with a machete or an axe. The angel blade was made for stabbing and precision strikes instead of just plowing through whatever was in the way. Dean didn't know how Cas made it look so damn easy.  
  
  
And now, somehow, Rory had managed to sneak up on Dean. The damn sword dropped out of Dean's fingers again as he turned towards the scrawny man, and he swore, scooping the weapon back up. "I got it."  
  
  
He caught Rory's skeptical expression in the mirrors that liked the room, but Dean ignored it and turned back to the gently mauled practice dummy. Dean had no idea why this crazy place had a mirror lined room full of beat up dummies, but it made about as much sense as having a closet the size of Lisa's house, so he just went with it. He figured it was kinda like the angels' green room; there because something _wanted_ it there.  
  
“You’re more likely to hurt yourself with that than to hurt anyone else,” Rory pointed out helpfully.”  
  
“I could show you how much damage I could do to someone else,” Dean growled under his breath.  
  
“You could _try_.”  
  
Okay, that was _it_. Dean turned away from the practice dummy and towards the dumb, skinny bastard, his wiser instincts screaming at him to _stop_. “Yeah?” he challenged, smirking.  
  
Turned out, the scrawny English guy was _fast_. Not supernaturally fast, but still pretty damn quick. The fight lasted all of ten seconds, during which Dean managed to clock Rory in the face, and Rory managed to snatch the sword out of Dean’s hand and embed it in the practice dummy’s ‘heart’. It vibrated slightly from the force of the impact, making a noise like a wet finger being run over crystal.  
  
“Jesus Christ, man! What are you, some kind of super-soldier from the future?”  
  
Rory rubbed his jaw, probing for lose teeth with his tongue. “I’m a nurse, actually.”  
  
“Space nurse?” Dean asked hopefully.  
  
“From Leadworth.” Rory smiled thinly. “In the southwest part of England. Now, about the sword…”  
  
[](http://s617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/fullmetalcute/?action=view&current=Swords.jpg)

***

  
  
“It’s not Mickey. Remember that,” Sam whispered to Martha, running his thumb over the rosary Nathaniel had procured when she’d gotten the holy water and salt. At least the angel was recovering her strength; it had only taken her a few seconds to get Sam everything he needed, and it’d taken her less time to slaughter a parking lot full of demons than it’d taken Sam and Martha to subdue the demon riding Mickey and the demons he’d brought along with him. The angel had attributed her swift victory to ‘An Ode to the Dawn’.  
  
All Sam really knew was that he’d stepped in exploded head bits while carrying Mickey’s unconscious body across the parking lot.  
  
“Martha?” the demon whimpered with Mickey’s voice. “Martha, baby, don’t listen to him! You _know_ me!”  
  
“Should have left the gag in,” Nathaniel said from her perch. The demon struggled against the duct tape binding him to the chair. Not that getting free of the chair would have done him much good -- they’d put the chair in the middle of a Devil’s Trap.  
  
“He was choking on the gag!” Martha snapped at the angel.  
  
“You could drug him again,” Nathaniel suggested.  
  
“He’d overdose.”  
  
“Martha, _please!_ You saw what these psychos did to those people, they’ll do the same thing to me! Look, look, remember the Medusa Cascade, we helped defeat the Daleks! We flew the Earth back into place with the TARDIS, you and me and Rose and Donna and two of those daft Doctor. Rose’s mum Jackie was there and the Doctor wouldn’t let her near the consol, remember? And Jack, oh _Christ_ , Jack Harkness, he-!”  
  
Sam threw holy water on the demon, making him shriek like he’d been doused with boiling water. Mickey’s eyes turned black, and he hissed, “This is why no one stays, Martha! Not the Doctor, not your Tom, not me! Because you _hurt_ them until they can’t stand the sight of you any more! He’ll leave too, Martha, just like everyone else! You’ll end up sad and alone, just like that shrill old whore you call a mother!”  
  
That firmed Martha’s resolve, and she picked up the bible Nathaniel had brought with her. “Teach me how to do this.”  
  
Sam smiled grimly. “Watch and learn.”  
  


***

  
  
Amy grinned, swinging her legs back and forth like a schoolgirl as Donna passed the popcorn to her. “That’s my husband,” she said proudly as Rory knocked the sword out of Dean’s hand again.  
  
“Nicely done,” Donna commented.  
  
“Want one?” Amy asked teasingly.  
  
Donna laughed, stealing some of the popcorn back. “My Shaun may not be a super soldier, but I wouldn’t trade him for anything.” She smiled fondly. “Major upgrade from the first time. _That one_ was just using me for an evil spider woman.” She popped a few kernels into her mouth. “Lucky for me the stuff he was putting in my coffee made me pop up right in the TARDIS.”  
  
Amy rested her chin on her hand, turning towards Donna. “The look on the Doctor’s face must have been _priceless_ ,” she giggled.  
  
“Well, he looked a lot less goofy then, more eyebrows and a bit less chin, but _oh yeah_. There I was, kitted out in my wedding dress and mad enough to spit nails-”  
  
“Your wedding dress?” Amy laughed. “He _didn’t_ -!”  
  
“On my wedding day,” Donna confirmed, shaking her head.   
  
That got a sharp laugh from Rory as he disarmed Dean again. “I see this is something he makes a habit of,” the young man noted, handing the sword back to Dean.  
  
“Twice isn’t a habit!” Amy protested.  
  
“You too?” Donna asked sympathetically.  
  
“Night before, actually, but twice _still_ isn’t a habit.”  
  
“How do you know it’s only been twice?” Dean asked. “Maybe there are more that he never told you about.”  
  
“A whole room full of ginger brides,” Rory agreed. “Just waiting to be discovered, like a closet full of dolls.”  
  


***

  
  
“Why didn’t you do that earlier?” Mickey demanded to know, shaking the remnants of his cast off his leg.  
  
“I was weakened while rescuing Sam,” Nathaniel said primly, unrepentant. “Be glad I healed you at all.” She turned to Sam and Martha. “We must go. Your insistence on exorcizing the demon means there is now one in the Pit who knows exactly where we are.”  
  
“We _know_ , Nathaniel,” Sam groaned. “We’ll head south for now, then make for Bobby’s. Dean’ll probably be there, and if he’s not, at least we’ll be somewhere demon-proof.” He grimaced as Martha helped Mickey to the van, their heads close together. Physically, Mickey was pretty much at factory settings, but angelic healing wouldn’t wipe away the awful feeling that being possessed left behind, like you’d been permanently stained, and you‘d never be clean again. “It never ends, does it?” he muttered to himself.  
  
To Sam’s surprise, Nathaniel grabbed his hand. “I promise you,” the angel said, gazing up at Sam with earnest brown eyes, “when you and your brother are reunited, you will be free to go. I will do everything in my power to see that you and Dean can go wherever you want, free of Heaven’s interference.”  
  
Sam looked down at the tiny hands clasping his own, unsure of what to say. “Uh, thanks.”  
  
“I mean it, Sam. I understand how badly you want the fighting to be over. When we find your brother, for you the battle is done.”  
  
“You two coming or what?” Mickey yelled from the van.   
  
As the hunter and the angel climbed into the van, Martha said, “First stop we make, I need to make a call.”


	7. Part 6

It’d taken a while, but eventually Dean knew when to call it quits. Even his ego could take only so much of a beating. So Dean left Rory with the angel sword, letting him show off for his wife while Dean explored. It was kind of like being in the world’s biggest, ever changing fun house; rooms within rooms, a swimming pool hanging suspended from the ceiling, a library that stretched on to infinity (which had a frightening amount of trashy romance novels and a complete collection of the works of Carver Ellund, much to Dean’s dismay), a room like standing in the middle of a field of stars ( _Sammy, you shoulda seen this_ ) and God only knew what else. He wandered aimlessly for hours, taking a nap in the first bedroom he found (decked out in tacky green shag carpeting and yellow walls, with a paisley bedspread), before finally finding his way back to the main consol.  
  
Okay, maybe Dean had been a little lost. Just a little. No big deal.  
  
“Yo, Doc! You and Cas ready to get this show on the road?” Dean called. The Doctor was playing with something ringing loudly amidst all the lights and levers and fucking _typewriters_. Castiel turned towards Dean as Dean climbed up onto the glass platform, just _watching_ him in that creepy way that Dean had talked to Cas about. Closer inspection showed that the Doctor was playing with what looked like most of an old television; the screen was buzzing and showing snow, with a vague suggestion of a person just barely visible as the alien fiddled. The Doctor hit the side of the television screen with his screwdriver, and suddenly the image was coming in crisp and clear.  
  
"Martha Jones!" the Doctor crowed, adjusting the bulky television screen. "You're looking well, _love_ the new hair! Afraid I'm a bit busy at the moment..."  
  
Dean turned away, rolling his eyes. Dealing with the Doctor was like dealing with a hyperactive five year old, and it was starting to get on Dean's nerves. They had an archangel to kill, an Apocalypse to stop, and the jackass was chatting up an old girlfriend like they had all the time in the world. Bad enough the other skinny English geek had taken the angel sword away from him.  
  
"I guess you can't spare a moment, then?" the pretty black woman said with a slightly dramatic sigh. "I've managed to bite off a bit more than I can chew."  
  
"If he can't help, we should probably get going, Martha -- hey, is that-?"  
  
Once again, Dean Winchester's world shifted, tilting sideways. Another familiar voice from a lifetime ago reached his ears, stabbing him right in the gut with pain that Dean had been doing his best to ignore. "Sammy?" He spun around, pushing the Doctor out of his way so he could see the screen. And there he was, Sam Winchester, crowding in next to Martha, with his big stupid grin and his stupid long hair.  
  
"Dean!"  
  
"That's your brother?" Martha asked, and Dean watched Sam nod, a thousand things trying to get out of his mouth all at once, keeping him from saying anything at all.  
  
"God, you have _no_ idea how glad I am to see you!" Sam said. Dean was pretty sure he could see tears in his brother's big, stupid eyes. He'd tease Sam about them later. Sam turned away. "Nathaniel, we found Dean!"  
  
Typical of the universe; it raised Dean's hopes so high, only to stomp all over them again. Dean barely had time to bark out, "Sam, get outta there!" before a pair of small hands reached between Martha and Sam, touching their foreheads and sending them both slumping to the ground and out of sight. Dean heard the Doctor say Martha's name, but he couldn't care less about that. Another face filled the screen, an ordinary looking young woman with straight hair and a bit of baby fat.  
  
"Hello, Dean Winchester, Doctor," she said calmly as Dean swore loudly, gripping the screen as if he could reach through it and strangle the bitch. "I'm going to make you an offer, and I suggest you give it your full consideration. As you can see, I have your brother. He is alive and unharmed, and he will remain that way. If you want him back, you will turn Donna Temple-Noble over to me. Then I will give you Sam, and release Martha Jones and Mickey Smith. Attempt to attack me, and they will die, starting with Mickey. When you are ready to make the trade, pray for me. Do not keep me waiting."  
  
The screen went black, and Dean immediately rounded on Castiel, grabbing him by the lapels of his overcoat and pinning him against the consol. “How long has Sam been alive?” he demanded.   
  
“I don’t know. I’m as surprised as you are.”  
  
Dean was willing to admit, Cas _did_ look surprised. “ _How_?”  
  
“I don’t know! Lucifer’s cage is impenetrable, and Crowley keeps it guarded. I couldn’t even get _close_.” Cas wrapped his hands around Dean’s wrists, making him let go. “I don’t know how Raphael could get anyone _there_ , let alone get Sam out.”  
  
“How would you even know?” Dean growled as Cas forced him back.  
  
“Did you think I didn’t _try_?”  
  
That got Dean to Stop, just for a moment. Cas looked at Dean like he‘d been accused of killing puppies in front of orphans, and when he took stock of the rest of the room, he found that the Doctor, Rory, and Amy had all put themselves between Dean and Donna. Donna, for her part, looked like she was going to be sick.  
  
“Dean,” Cas said. “ _Dean_. Raphael will end the _world_ if he gets Donna.”  
  
“They have Sam.” A lifetime of protecting Sam did _not_ just go away after four months of thinking his brother was dead. He’d failed before, but he _wasn’t_ going to fail his brother again. He’d burn the whole world down if that’s what it took to get Sam back.  
  
The Doctor looked like he was thinking the exact same thing about Donna. Cas’s hand fell on Dean’s upper arm, squeezing it tightly as he hissed, “This is not a fight you can win.” Dean shook the angel off; he had eyes only for Donna as his mind raced.  
  
“The firebug’s got Martha and Mickey.” Donna’s voice cut through the tension like a hot knife through butter, snapping the Doctor’s attention away from Dean. “You two wanna get all stupid and macho over me, fine. _I’m_ gonna work on a way to save everyone.” She sniffed pointedly, giving Dean and the Doctor equally arch looks. “Personally, I’m getting tired of having to run from that girl anyway.”  
  
“Dean,” Cas whispered urgently, as if hoping the tone could somehow make Dean see reason, his hand going back to Dean’s arm, over the hand shaped brand. The angel’s skin felt burning hot even through the t-shirt. “If they get Donna, _everyone_ dies. Even Sam. She’s too important. ”  
  
“Mind directing any comments about me _to_ me, Scruffy?” Donna snapped.  
  
“ _Donna_ ,” the Doctor hissed in the same tone Castiel tried to use on Dean, “I can’t let you-”  
  
“You want a slap? Cause I’ve got one here in my pocket, just for you.” Donna put a hand on Rory’s shoulder and grinned at Amy. “You two seem to be the only ones here not involved in the pissing contest. Care to help?”  
  
“I’m always up for saving the world,” Amy told her brightly, linking her arm through Donna’s.  
  
“That’s settled, then.” Donna walked arm and arm out of the consol room, Rory following after. “Call us when you’re done fighting, yeah?”  
  


***

  
  
There were so many questions Raphael wanted to ask. After all, it wasn’t often the archangel was actually taken by surprise, _especially_ by a cherub.  
  
Nathaniel was sitting beside Lucifer’s unconscious vessel, nudging the legs of one of the other two hostages aside so she had room on the bed, looking at Raphael with her usual expression of puppy like adoration. “I am… surprised, sister.”  
  
Nathaniel dropped her gaze to the floor, as was only proper for one as unimportant as her when addressing her superior. “I apologize for not contacting you sooner. I’ve been having to improvise more than I’d thought I would, and I didn’t want to alert Castiel before I was ready.”  
  
“But he knows _now_ ,” Raphael noted.  
  
“It was unavoidable.”  
  
“Just as well.” Raphael nodded to himself, the new plan already coming together in his thoughts. “Even if the Righteous Man comes alone, Castiel will follow, and we will have him _and_ the woman. We will have them all.”  
  
Nathaniel looked up, puzzled. “Brother?”  
  
Raphael waved his hand, smiling. “Nothing to concern yourself with. Your plan serves me very well, and I want you to continue on as you have.”  
  
“…Yes, Raphael.” Nathaniel said after a moment’s pause. She slid off the bed, straighten her jacket before she spoke again, as if summoning up the courage to speak. “There is a… small problem, however.” Raphael’s gaze turned harsh as suddenly as a spring day going from fair to foul, and she squirmed. “The demons. They’ve been following us since I retrieved Sam, and I am not so powerful as to conceal us completely. Until now, they’ve proven to be only a minimal distraction, but…” She gestured to the three unconscious humans, and Raphael nodded with sudden understanding. Dead hostages did no one any good. At least, not until the time they had finished serving their purpose.  
  
“I’ll see that you are protected until the time comes,” Raphael assured the cherub. “You just play your part, and I’ll handle the rest.”  
  


***

  
  
“She’ll be expecting the call to come from me,” Dean pointed out, his way of announcing himself to the room. The trio of Brits had set themselves up in a place that could have passed for a war room from dozens of movies, maps tacked to the walls and books spread out over the single table, with the three gathered around it.  
  
Donna didn’t bother to glance up. “Um-hum.”  
  
“So you need me, unless you’ve got a better way to lure her in.” Dean went on, feeling more and more uncomfortable under Rory’s watchful gaze.  
  
“Different,” Donna corrected. “But yeah, this’ll be easier.”  
  


***

  
  
The Doctor and Castiel eyed each other uneasily. Of course, no one should ever really be at ease when two ancient beings of unimaginable power were in the same space, even when the two were in complete agreement with each other instead of wondering if they were about to throw down over their human companions.  
  
Because both of them knew that in the end, the Doctor would do whatever it took to keep Donna safe and rescue Martha and Mickey, and no matter what the cost, Castiel would always choose Dean.  
  
So once again, the fate of the world rested on Dean’s unknowing shoulders.  
  
“How do we find the angel?” Rory asked. “It’s all well and good that she’ll come to Dean, but how do we know she’ll even bring any of the hostages along?”  
  
“Nathaniel would bring Sam,” Castiel said. “The cherub has never been inclined towards deception, and will deal fairly with Dean until the trap is sprung.”  
  
“Yeah, cause angels are all about the honesty,” Dean mumbled darkly.  
  
“I can find Martha,” the Doctor informed them, “the same way I found Donna.”  
  
“Nathaniel isn’t likely to let Martha out of her sight until the deal is made, and she wouldn‘t bother to keep her bargaining chips in separate places” Castiel added, already seeing where the Doctor’s plan was going. “So even if she should leave Sam behind, we’ll be able to rescue him.”  
  
“Meanwhile, me and Donna catch ourselves an angel.” Dean grinned, entirely without any of the warmth and humor one would expect from such an expression. “So I set down nearby and place my call while take the hideout. All we need now is a little holy oil.”  
  


***

  
  
_**Alright, you evil feathery bitch, I’m here. I want to make the trade.**_  
  
Nathaniel did a little jig of glee as Dean Winchester gave her an address, berating her all the while. It didn’t matter that the Righteous Man was threatening to rip her wings out and use the feathers to stuff pillows; all that mattered was that things were going to be alright again. She turned to Sam, and the smile that had been splitting her face faded away. Sam was still unconscious, sprawled on the bed between Martha and Mickey. He wasn’t awake to see her triumph, and wasn’t likely to _be_ awake until after he was safely in his brother’s hands. Nathaniel walked around the bed, reaching over Martha to press her fingers to Sam’s forehead, sending him deeper into sleep.  
  
“It’s almost over,” Nathaniel assured the unconscious man, picking Sam up. He made for an awkward load, so much larger than her vessel and limp as a rag doll. If she were anything but an angel, she wouldn’t have been able to lift Sam at all.  
  
There would be no need to come back -- Mickey and Martha would wake on their own and walk right back into their lives if they wished, until the coming of Paradise.  
  
Nathaniel knew where Dean was now -- he wasn’t even all that far away. Donna _would_ be there; Dean Winchester wouldn’t take any risks, not with Sam.  
  
Nathaniel concentrated on Dean Winchester’s location, teleporting herself and Sam away. Five minutes later, an angel died as the others fled, and a man who once waited for nearly two thousand years strode into the room.


	8. Part 7

Donna Temple-Noble had seen a lot of things in her life, even if she’d forgotten them for a little while. She’d seen Pompeii burn, moons made of diamond, ice planets, heard the singing of the Ood in both captivity and freedom. But there was something about the sight of that tiny girl hauling around a great bloody moose of a man like an oversized rag doll that struck her as just plain _strange_. Donna hadn’t really known _want_ to expect, really, but _this_ wasn’t it. She almost laughed around the gag Dean had stuffed into her mouth.  
  
Nathaniel saw Donna and broke out into a smile that made her look like a twelve year old. “Hello, Donna,” she said, like seeing her had lifted a great weight from the angel’s shoulders. Maybe it was just that she’d put Sam down on the concrete floor of the basement. Dean had picked the house, citing it as the place of a particularly _nasty_ haunting he and his brother had taken care of a while back. Despite the ghost being history, the house remained untenanted, making it the perfect place for the exchange.  
  
Behind her back, Donna’s hands shook. She could feel the heat from the lighter’s flame near her back, threatening the ropes tied loosely around her wrists and waist. _So_ many things could go wrong, and it would _all_ be over for all of them. Donna hadn’t been _this_ scared since the Sontarans had stolen the TARDIS with her trapped inside. The angel looked down at Sam, then up at Dean. “He’ll wake soon. Take your brother and go.”  
  
“Sammy,” Dean whispered brokenly, everything apparently forgotten but the man on the floor. Dean went for Sam while Nathaniel continued to smile at Donna.  
  
She’d given Donna the exact same smile when she’d appeared in the office and told Donna “Be not afraid.”  
  
Everything had caught fire after that.  
  
“If you say ‘Be not afraid’,” Donna mumbled around the gag, “I’m going to scream.” It came out somewhat less than coherent, but she suspected from the kicked puppy look Nathaniel gave her that she understood what Donna had meant. Mentally, Donna counted down the seconds as the angel crossed the floor to her, waiting until just the _right_ moment…  
  
Then she dropped the lighter.  
  
The holy oil went up, the fire racing across the basement floor, following the trail Dean had made from where Donna stood to the circle that Nathaniel had just stepped in to. The angel looked shocked as the fire closed around her -- Dean had claimed the fire would trap Nathaniel, but Donna wasn’t entirely convinced. Donna shook off the ropes and yanked out the gag, scrambling back from the fire and Nathaniel. The little angel remained within the circle of fire while Dean pulled his brother upright.  
  
“What have you _done_?” Nathaniel whispered, spinning around as if a way out might open up behind her. “ _What have you done_?”  
  


***

  
  
“Don’t blink,” Amy said in a stage whisper. Nobody laughed, so she let her grin fall away as she approached the circle of fire. The angel trapped inside watched her, face as still as stone. “So, hi again!”  
  
“Step away from the angel please, Amy,” the Doctor murmured in that tone that Amy had come to recognize as _Don’t argue and be ready to run._ Amy took a few steps back from the fire, the angel still watching her. “Hello, Nathaniel.”  
  
The angel looked from Amy to the Doctor, tilting her head slightly to one side. “I have nothing to say to you, Time Lord.”  
  
“Really? People usually have so much to say at times like this,” the Doctor said coolly, pacing around the basement before raising his sonic screwdriver and switching it on, scanning Nathaniel. The angel turned slowly to follow his progress. “This is interesting… No demands for release? No ‘You will face my holy wrath’?”  
  
“What would be the point? I’m going to be dead soon.”  
  


***

  
  
“God dammit, Sammy! You know angels are dicks with wings, why’d you listen to that one?”  
  
 _A heartwarming Winchester family reunion,_ Sam thought. It didn’t matter; he knew Dean wasn’t _actually_ angry. “I wasn’t exactly spoiled for choices. I woke up in a cemetery with Nathaniel standing over me. _Then_ we were attacked by demons. It’s been a busy day.”  
  
Dean rocked back on his heels, lips pursed. “Take off your shirt.”  
  
Sam wasn’t the only one in the room to give Dean a stunned look. By the basement door, Mickey whispered to Martha about Americans being weirder than Time Lords while Martha shushed him. Donna, perched on the dusty remains of a couch, let out a bark of laughter. “I feel like I should be stuffing money down someone’s pants.”  
  
Dean didn’t bother to look even a little sorry. “You got raised from Perdition. You should have a handprint, and I wanna see.” He hiked up the sleeve of his own shirt, showing off the handprint that was just as red and raw looking as it had been almost two years ago. Dean didn’t see it, but Castiel shifted his weight slightly, looking away. Sam shrugged off the flannel shirt and pulled up the sleeves of his tee, revealing arms that bore nothing more than a few fading scars, the kinds earned from a lifetime of hunting monsters and fighting demons. Dean looked at the unmarked skin, pursing his lips. “Pants,” he said flatly.  
  
“No,” Sam replied, his tone just as flat.  
  
“We should be thorough,” Donna pointed out helpfully, getting a _look_ from Martha. “What? I’m married, not dead!”  
  
“It’s gotta be somewhere,” Dean went on. “So come on, off with the pants, Sammy.”  
  
Castiel exhaled slowly. “Nathaniel has not marked Sam. I would be able to sense it.”  
  
Dean shot Cas an irritated looked while Donna and Martha’s faces fell in disappointment. “Explain?”  
  
“I needed a way to keep track of you at first.” Castiel crossed his arms, shifting his weight again and looking down at the floor. Beneath him, he could feel the circle of holy fire; Sam had figured that out by the way Cas kept avoiding a certain five foot wide, roughly circular chunk of the floor no matter where he went in the room.  
  
“That is so creepy,” Dean muttered. “And I’m getting _real_ tired of all this crap. Lets just gank the bitch and _go_.”  
  
Castiel shook his head slowly, studying the part of the floor he’d been so carefully avoiding rather than look at Dean. “Nathaniel has been Raphael’s right hand in this. I cannot let this chance to gain information pass.”  
  
Dean rolled his eyes, but Sam interrupted him with a quiet, “She got me out of Hell. That’s going to be worth something.”  
  
“I would like to know how she managed to pull that off,” Castiel pointed out with a grim expression.  
  
Martha paced the length of the floor, looking thoughtful. “But isn’t it this Raphael we need to be worried about? By now he’s _got_ to know the trade didn’t go off, and he’ll be looking for us, right?”  
  
“He won’t find us,” Castiel said confidently, but neither Sam nor Dean shared the angel’s confidence.  
  
“So, Martha, you wanna learn how to make an angel banishing sigil?” Sam asked as Dean produced a pocket knife. Cas shot the brothers a dirty look; on anyone else, Sam would have called the angel’s expression a pout.  
  
“What are we going to do about Raphael?” Martha pressed insistently. “When he shows up? Stick him in a circle of fire?”  
  
Castiel pursed his lips, drumming his fingers on his thigh. “That would only be a temporary measure,” he reluctantly admitted, “and I cannot take him in a straight fight. The Doctor and I have been working on a solution, but he _is_ an archangel.” He exhaled slowly. “The only one who has _ever_ killed an archangel was Lucifer.”  
  
“Who is still safely locked away in the Cage,” Sam finished.  
  
“So why not put Raphael in the cage?” Mickey asked as the basement door opened with a shriek of rusty hinges. The Doctor half danced into the room, twirling his sonic screwdriver between his long fingers, spinning to face Mickey.  
  
“Did you,” the Time Lord asked slowly, “just suggest that we open up the cage containing two of the most powerful beings in existence so _we_ can shove another one in?” Mickey sighed wearily and nodded. “Mickey Smith, you are _brilliant_!”  
  
“I have a gun,” Mickey warned, “and I’ve been having a very bad day. So I think I’d be justified in shooting you if you’re making fun.”  
  
The Doctor took a moment to look hurt. “I’m not joking.”  
  
“Okay, how the hell are we supposed to do _that_ , smart guy?” Dean growled. “The rings disappeared when the cage closed -- no key.”  
  
The Doctor smiled widely. “I’ll have you know that I am _very_ good at opening locks.”  
  


***

  
  
Even standing outside the circle of fire, Castiel was aware of how dangerous it was. Nathaniel stood in the center, watching him with bitter resignation while a little voice of caution in the back of Castiel’s head reminded him that while she _was_ just a cherub, fire was Nathaniel’s element. He had been there for the first lightning strike, when Nathaniel had whispered to that first burning tree, coaxing the fire until it spread to the grass and the other trees. Much of that early forest had burned that day, while Nathaniel sang to the flames.  
  
Really, they should have taken that as a sign of things to come.  
  
Rory Williams stood closest to the flames, borrowed angel blade in his hand, just in case Nathaniel found a way out. The human had proven disturbingly good at fighting and killing angels, and he wasn’t likely to be goaded in to doing anything stupid. Dean clattered down the stairs behind Castiel, calling up to Sam that now was a _great_ time to give Martha the grand tour while Sam accused his brother of being a crude jackass and unfit for human company. The Doctor came down last, shutting the basement door behind him.  
  
“Hello again, Nathaniel!” the Time Lord said with a cheery smile. Nathaniel didn’t respond; she had eyes only for Castiel.  
  
“Get on with it.”  
  
“You’re going to tell us how you got in to Lucifer’s Cage, Nathaniel.”  
  
For a moment, Nathaniel’s lip curled up. “A little light torture before the execution, then. That explains Dean’s presence.”  
  
Castiel felt Dean bristle, but thankfully (for once) the human held his tongue. Dean’s time with Lisa, it seemed, _had_ taught him something.  
  
“Or will it be the other one?” Nathaniel nodded towards Rory. “You’ve turned him into a very effective weapon against your brothers, Castiel. _Much_ better than your Righteous Man.”  
  
“Nobody’s going to kill you,” the Doctor said gently, aiming the sonic screwdriver at the trapped angel again, studying the results intently.  
  
Nathaniel cocked her head to one side. “Are you lying, or do you really believe that?” She looked again to Castiel. “Tell me, Castiel, how many of us have to die before your pride is satisfied? Or shall you follow the Doctor’s example and wipe us all out, as he did?”  
  
“My _pride_ has nothing to do with this,” Castiel insisted with a growl.  
  
“Your pride has _everything_ to do with this!” Nathaniel hissed back, coming to the very edge of the fire. “In your pride, you laid claim to the Righteous Man, and _that_ was where it all started! You preach of free will, but you demand we choose what _you_ want, and all the while you wash your hands in our blood! So get on with it. At least for me, the fight will finally be _over_.”  
  
Castiel stood before Nathaniel, on the edge of the holy fire, skin prickling as the flames nipped at his Grace. “I never wanted this.”  
  
“You chose it when you chose _him_ ,” Nathaniel spat.  
  
“Lady, you should be on your knees thanking Cas for not ganking your feathery ass,” Dean said darkly, coming up beside Castiel.  
  
“I was dead the moment you double crossed me. It’s only a matter of _when_.” Nathaniel turned her hard, hot gaze on Dean. “If you had an ounce of sense, you would take your brother and _go_ before Crowley’s demons find him again.”  
  
If the Doctor hadn’t moved so that he was behind Nathaniel, Castiel would have missed the fascinated expression on the Doctor’s face as he looked from his screwdriver to the cherub, a slow smile spreading across his face. Dean, meanwhile, swore expressively. “God _dammit_ , what does Brimstone Breath want?”  
  
“The same thing as us, I suspect,” Castiel pointed out. “How Sam got out of the Cage without just breaking it open.”  
  
“What if she _did_?” Dean demanded to know.  
  
“We would already know. Lucifer and Michael would have come after us first.”  
  
“Fuck,” Dean sighed, raking his hands through his hair. There was no real force, no rage behind the word this time, even as he stomped up the basement steps, growling about demon proofing the house.  
  
“You didn’t have to tell us that,” the Doctor noted, tucking his screwdriver back into his tweed jacket.  
  
“I made a promise, and I intend to see it kept.”  
  


***

  
  
Martha sprayed the cut with something antibacterial that really stung more than the cut had. Sam made a show of wincing, and she grinned up at him, slapping an adhesive bandage over the cleaned out cut. “Need me to kiss it better, too?” she asked sweetly. The grin fell away as she studied the freshly drawn sigil. The blood hadn’t even begun to turn brown yet. “Does it have to be your own, or can you use someone else’s?”  
  
Sam gave the sigil a thoughtful look, watching a bead of blood roll down the faded wallpaper. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Usually, we end up having to use them by the time we’ve finished them. Doesn’t leave much time for testing things out.” He flipped the knife in his other hand, catching it easily by the blade and holding it out to Martha. “Ready to give it a try?”  
  
“Is this some kind of hunter initiation?” Martha teased, taking the knife and wiping it down, eyeing the blade critically. “How you didn’t end up dead from infection before now…”  
  
Sam laughingly told her, “No, you don’t get to call yourself a _real_ hunter until you’ve done a salt and burn in the rain. We should put the next one up near the front-”  
  
Dean came thundering up the stairs from the basement, slamming the door behind him. “Forget the angels for now, we need to get demon proofing.”  
  
Sam and Martha exchanged a quick look. “Mickey and Donna are on salt detail,” Martha told the elder Winchester helpfully, “and Amy’s putting up the sigils for keeping angels _out_.”  
  
“We were gonna start on the Devil’s Traps after that,” Sam added.  
  
Dean exhaled sharply, closing his eyes and nodding. “Holy water?”  
  
“Water’s off here,” Sam noted.  
  
“We can raid the TARDIS,” Martha pointed out. “I think I remember where the swimming pools are, unless they’ve moved again.”  
  
Dean visibly relaxed, even if it was just a little bit. “When were you gonna bring up the ‘chased by demons’ thing?” There was a bit of anger there, but Sam knew it was just Dean being Dean.  
  
“When are we _not_ chased by demons?” Sam retorted.  
  
“Can you two save the squabbling for a bit later?” Martha sighed, running the knife across her palm, drawing forth a thin line of blood. “We’ve got work to do.”  
  
Dean rocked back on his heels, slowly grinning at his younger brother. “I like her.”  
  


***

  
  
“I don’t like this,” Castiel said, not for the first time, even as he helped the Doctor with the machine that had begun to fill one wall of the basement. He shot a look towards Nathaniel, who continued to glare balefully from within the fire. She’d gone silent after her rant, refusing to answer any questions. Not that the Doctor required any more answers from Nathaniel; the readings of the sonic screwdriver were more than enough to give the Time Lord what he needed to get into Lucifer’s Cage; he’d announced as much with considerable good cheer before scurrying off to the TARDIS, dragging Castiel with him to hunt for the parts he would need for his machine, prattling on about frequencies and shattering glass with the right tone.  
  
“Got a better plan, have you?” the Doctor asked. “Me, I’ve had enough of killing,” he went on softly, “haven’t you?”  
  
Castiel refused to respond, instead kneeling in front of the machine and screwing a panel closed. Even in it’s inactive state, he could feel it resonating with the Music of the Spheres. Sonic, the Doctor had said. They would lock on to the vibrational frequency of the Cage and open it with a one way door for just long enough to shove Raphael in. If Michael or Lucifer noticed, they could force the door the other way, so they would have to be fast.  
  
But, loathe as he was to admit it, Castiel didn’t have a better plan for stopping Raphael, so the angel said nothing.  
  
“It’s almost done.” The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver hummed, and the machine attuned itself to the frequency. “Ready to end this war, Castiel?”  
  
“Yes,” Castiel said fervently, ignoring Nathaniel’s glare. Truthfully, Castiel _would_ have executed the cherub already if he didn’t think she might still be useful, and he still might have to do so… even if it meant proving that she was right. When the war was over, Castiel knew that he couldn’t afford to have any dissent, so Nathaniel might have to be used as an example. He didn’t _want_ things to come to that; he’d seen enough of his brothers and sisters die by his hands and by his orders for a thousand lifetimes. But he also knew that he couldn’t afford any threat to himself and the Winchesters to remain. Sam and Dean had earned their rest a thousand times over, and Castiel would do whatever it took to see that they got it.   
  


***

  
  
Mickey scraped at the paint on the window, grumbling all the while. “We _just_ got this crap up, now we’re taking it down?”  
  
Dean was adding lines to a ward in front of him, shooting the occasional glance towards his brother and Martha. They had their heads bent close together, talking quietly. “You could always go help Cas and the Doctor.”  
  
Mickey shuddered dramatically. “And have Nathaniel glaring at me the whole time? Pass. I’ve had _enough_ of angels.”  
  
“I hear ya, man,” Dean muttered. “Dicks with wings.”  
  
“You remember Cas is an angel, right?” Sam said, tearing himself away from his conversation with Martha to give Dean one of his better bitchfaces. “And Anna was alright until she went crazy.”  
  
“Who’s Anna?” Donna asked as she came through with Amy, passing around bags of potato chips that they’d scrounged up from the TARDIS.  
  
“Another redhead who had something ancient and unknowable locked up inside her head.” Dean tore open a little bag of salty goodness, dumping all the chips into his mouth in one go and crunching them noisily. “She went nuts and tried to kill us before we were born.”  
  
“Can’t imagine why she’d wanna do that,” Donna managed to say with a completely straight face.  
  
“With those manners, I can’t imagine why anyone would want you dead,” Amy told Dean sweetly.  
  
“When I told Santa I wanted to be double teams by redheads this year, this was _not_ what I meant,” Dean mock-growled. Sam threw his bag of chips at his brother, bouncing them off Dean’s head.  
  
The basement door swung open with a screech, Castiel drifting in to the room like a dark cloud. “We’re ready. I have informed by people that I am here and have Nathaniel. That should be enough to draw Raphael out, with him knowing about Donna.”  
  
“Lets do this, then.” Dean smirked, rubbing his hands together as a truck rammed through the wall, gas peddle held down by half a brick, followed by the demons who had set it in motion.  
  
“Get them! We’ll bring them to Crowley in pieces!”  
  


***

  
  
Rory didn’t sigh, though the Doctor could tell that he was sorely tempted to as the floorboards creaked loudly above him and the fighting started upstairs. “Just _once_ would be nice,” he said to nobody in particular.  
  
The Doctor just shook his head. “Quickly.”  
  
Rory was already racing up the stairs before the Doctor had finished speaking the word; Amy was up there, and that was all that mattered. The Doctor stayed in the basement with the machine and the captured angel.  
  
“That would be the demons,” Nathaniel noted. The Doctor turned towards her with a faint smile while the angel stared up at the creaking ceiling.  
  
“Speaking to us again? Lovely.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter.” Dust fell on Nathaniel, and she brushed it off with a resigned sigh. “It’s over. Once Raphael is taken, Castiel will have no more use for me. I will die with my cause.”  
  
“You’re awful certain about him killing you for someone who isn’t dead yet.” The Doctor watched Nathaniel closely.  
  
“Why do _you_ care? You are notoriously vicious with those who threaten your companions.”  
  
The Doctor perched on the edge of his machine, crossing one leg over the other. “Lets call it an academic interest.”   
  
Upstairs, the battle raged while the Time Lord and the angel watched each other. “Why are you down _here?_ I can’t go anywhere, nor can your… overly complicated lock pick.”  
  
“You got out of Lucifer’s Cage, you’ve managed to survive more than one encounter with dear old Cas, and when you’re let loose, things tend to burn down, so forgive me if I think it would be a good idea keep an eye on you. Remember that city in Mesopotamia? You burned it to the ground in less than a day.”  
  
Nathaniel pointed a finger at the Doctor. “That was not my fault! There was a drought!” She scowled. “And the same could very well be said for _you_. I may have burned cities, but you burn _worlds_.”  
  
“And what do you think will happen to _this_ world, if your Raphael has his way?” The Doctor paced across the basement, standing at the bottom of the stairs with a thoughtful frown. It had gotten quiet up there, and the air felt far too heavy, like right before a thunderstorm. In her circle of fire, Nathaniel turned slowly, eyes still on the ceiling. “Oh… _no_.”  
  
The Doctor raced back to his machine, long fingers scrabbling over the controls, turning the machine on and making it sing even as the basement door squealed open, the steps creaking under the weight of the last free archangel in the world.  
  
Lightning slammed into the Doctor, a genuine bolt of divine retribution, followed by a chuckle like a roll of thunder as the Doctor fell into darkness.  
  


***

  
  
The mortals hung on the wall like so many decorations, held in place by Raphael’s power. Castiel stood in the middle of the basement, surrounded by holy fire. In Nathaniel’s unfettered presence, it leapt up almost high enough to obscure the captured angel’s bruised and bloodied face. Raphael concentrated on the machine, occasionally throwing a smirk at his captives. “You’ve done very well, Nathaniel.”  
  
A smile twitched across Nathaniel’s face, fading as quickly as it had appeared while she watched the humans and the Gallifreyan while they struggled against the unstoppable force of Raphael’s will. The archangel had forced them in to silence after allowing them to threaten, curse and berate the two angels impotently. Raphael had finally grown tired of it, demanding silence while he worked the Doctor’s machine.  
  
“You have brought me my greatest enemy, his allies, the last Time Lord, and the keys to Lucifer’s Cage.” He caressed the Doctor’s humming machine lovingly. “Magnificent. Father is truly with us in this.”  
  
“We can send the humans on their way and begin now, then?” Nathaniel asked, perking up. Raphael turned from the gently singing machine, eyebrows rising slowly as his shoulders twitched, and the archangel started to laugh.  
  
“Let them go? Nathaniel, your sense of humor needs work.” Raphael shook his head, barely hiding his smile behind a hand as he flicked a switch and making the humming rise in pitch. “We still need them.”  
  
“We have the machine, we have the traitor,” Nathaniel ticked the points off on her fingers, “and we have the Doctor. The others serve no purpose.”  
  
Raphael turned his back to the machine and walked across the basement to stand in front of Sam, who continued to struggle. The man’s mouth worked ceaselessly despite no sound coming out, no doubt trying to let Raphael know _exactly_ what he thought of the archangel. “You forgot about Lucifer’s vessel, sister.” He tossed a pleased little smirk at Dean, who was silently screaming at him. “We need somewhere to put our fallen brother when we let him out of the Cage.”  
  
“There are _others_ ,” Nathaniel pointed out. “The bloodline of Lucifer isn’t so small that there are no other options.”  
  
“But none so well suited as Sam.” Raphael clasped his hands behind his back and sauntered to the very edge of the circle of fire, gazing in to Castiel’s angry, battered face. “He’s already said yes. There is no barrier between Lucifer and that… _abomination_. And when Lucifer rises from the Pit, Castiel, you will get to watch as the fallen one uses Sam’s body to rip Dean and the rest of your allies apart.” Raphael laughed again, a roll of thunder that shook the house. “I think that ties everything up nicely.”  
  
Nathaniel stared at the archangel, her expression growing slowly more horrified with each word from the archangel‘s mouth. "Brother, this is... unnecessary. It's cruelty for the sake of cruelty."  
  
Raphael shot Nathaniel a surprised look, seeming to really _listen_ to what she was saying for the first time. "Are you... _questioning_ me, Nathaniel?"  
  
The cherub opened her mouth to reply, then shut it again as she paced around the room, until she was standing between the humans and Raphael. When she finally spoke, she sounded as surprised as Raphael looked. " _Yes_."  
  
Raphael's expression went from surprised to thunderous, hand raising to smite his suddenly insubordinate follower. Before he could bring his fingers together in a snap that would render her vessel so much chunky liquid, Nathaniel pulled the holy oil fueled fire from the ring that imprisoned Castiel and threw it right in the archangel's face. Raphael howled in surprise and pain, the whole house rattling as angelic flesh sizzled and burned. “ _ **How dare you!**_ ”  
  
The humans fell from where they hung, Rory going to Amy’s side while Dean bolted to Sam’s, and the Doctor raced between the spreading flames to his machine. Fire radiated out in all directions from Nathaniel and Raphael, only just avoiding Mickey, Martha, and Donna as some of it splashed against the wall where they had been pinned. The three scrambled out of the fire’s way, but they still got scorched. Castiel, freed from the now broken ring of holy fire, moved between Sam and Dean and the two angels, pushing the raging fire away as best he could with his Grace.  
  
“ _Go_!” Nathaniel barked, throwing up a wall of fire in front of Raphael, blocking his way to the humans. “I keep my promises, now _go_!”  
  
Raphael pushed through the wall of flames, ignoring his sizzling flesh as he took Nathaniel by the shoulder, ramming his blade beneath her ribs. The fires flared high and hot for a moment, briefly taking the shape of wings, then died down to nothing more than normal fire, supported only by what fuel was already there, no longer supported by the righteous rage of an angel. Sam grabbed Dean by the arm, hauling him up the burning stairs. Rory shoved Amy after the brothers, letting Donna and Mickey go up before him before racing up the stairs after.  
  
“Doctor!” Martha called, following Rory up as the fire started eating away at the ceiling. The Doctor didn’t look up from the humming machine, flipping switches and spinning dials.  
  
“With you in a moment!” he called over Raphael’s pained howls. Nathaniel’s body hit the floor as Castiel pushed forward, blade in hand.  
  
In a straight fight, Castiel couldn’t have hoped to take Raphael. But the archangel was wounded, half blinded by the first and final act of the cherub’s defiance, and Castiel was _angry_. He parried Raphael’s clumsy blows, and while he wasn’t able to do more damage, he _was_ able to keep the archangel off balance and away from the escaping humans or the busy Doctor. The machine _screamed_ , shaking the burning house as badly as Raphael’s screams as a swirling, sucking void opened up where a wall had once been, sucking in the flames in the basement and pulling at the three ancient beings.  
  
Castiel rushed forward, barreling in to Raphael and forcing him into the screaming void.  
  
Castiel knew that it would swallow him too, trapping him in the Cage with Michael, Lucifer, and Raphael, but it was the only way to be sure of trapping Raphael. Castiel could feel himself being pulled in by the undeniable gravity of the Cage, lifting him off his feet and pulling him in after the screaming Raphael, only to be caught by the back of his overcoat by the surprisingly strong hand of the Doctor.  
  
“Hang on!” the last Time Lord shouted, hauling Castiel back from the brink while clinging to his machine with his other hand. Castiel grabbed hold of the machine as the pressure from the vortex grew. The Doctor set himself to shutting down the machine, his feet threatening to go flying out from under him. Castiel watched as Nathaniel’s body slid in, flopping about like a discarded rag doll. The ceiling collapsed, flaming wood crashing down and being sucked down into the Pit. “Come on, come on!” The Doctor hit the machine with his fist, making the humming finally stop. The voice swirled closed, but the noise did not abate. More of the ceiling came down, along with flaming chunks of the second floor.  
  
Castiel grabbed the Doctor, teleporting them out of the flaming house and into the clean, open air.


	9. Epilogue

Donna Temple-Noble stepped out of the TARDIS and on to her very ordinary, normal street. For a moment, she just stood there, inhaling deeply. She turned around, looking back in to the blue Police Box with a slowly growing smile. “Well, come on. I’m sure I can rustle up something for tea.” She strode to her front door, half running by the time she was halfway up the front path. The door opened before Donna even reached it, her husband rushing out to meet her.  
  
“Oh God, Donna!” Shaun caught Donna, lifting her off her feet before pulling her into a rib crushing embrace, burying his face in her hair. “Oh _God_ , I thought you were dead! Where have you _been_?”  
  
Donna clung to Shaun, feeling the tension she’d been carrying finally drain out of her. “I have _so_ much to tell you.”  
  
“I don’t care,” Shaun whispered brokenly, clasping Donna‘s face in his hands and resting his forehead against Donna’s. “All that matters is that you’re alright.”  
  
Donna didn’t notice the once again familiar sound of the TARDIS teleporting away until it was already gone, and Mickey Smith cleared his throat loudly. Shaun let Donna go, and they both turned to look at the young man standing alone in the empty street.  
  
“Don’t suppose that offer for tea is still open?” Mickey asked.  
  


***

  
  
Sam looked at the half burned house, biting the inside of his lip. “Nice place,” he said brightly, turning to Dean.  
  
“Lisa is gonna _kill_ me,” Dean groaned, raking his fingers through his hair.  
  
“At least the car’s okay,” Sam noted with a little smirk. Checking on the Impala had been the _first_ thing Dean had done when the TARDIS had materialized in Lisa’s back yard. The Impala had been resting safely in the unattached garage, waiting for Dean to come back for her.  
  
“We can fix this,” the Doctor said, joining the brothers for a moment.  
  
“See?” Sam said. “No reason for Lisa to kill you. It’s finally _over_.” He squeezed Dean’s shoulder, grinning.  
  
Dean didn’t grin back. Instead, he looked up at where Cas was balanced on the broken and burned bedroom wall. “It’s never _over_ , Sam, and we’re only kidding ourselves if we pretend that it is.”  
  
“Hey, hey, _hey_!” Sam turned Dean around so they were facing each other. “You finally got the Apple Pie life you wanted. Don’t tell me you’re gonna just walk away.”  
  
“The Apple Pie life _I_ wanted,” Dean retorted, “or that _you_ wanted?” I don’t belong here, Sammy! I’ve just been drifting along _trying_ to be like all these other people, and it _wasn’t_ working!” Dean gestured towards the house, the yard, grinding one of the little yellow dandelions beneath his heel. “ _This_ isn’t me, and pretending that is it is just gonna get people _hurt_.” He watched Cas jump down, landing lightly on his feet.  
  
“So what are you gonna do, Dean? Hop into the Impala and drive off?” Sam shook his head in puzzlement.  
  
“There’s always room in the TARDIS for one or two more,” the Doctor noted as he, Amy, and Rory walked past with God only knew what. Martha was lingering by the TARDIS, one hand resting on the dark blue doors as she watched the brothers Winchester from a distance. She’d opted to come with the Doctor after leaving Mickey with Donna, saying that she wanted to see this through to the end.  
  
“I’m not leaving my baby behind again,” Dean said quickly.  
  
“I think we can find a place to fit your car. Make a little space in the bunk bed room, maybe? Or I could move all the Carver Ellund books from the library….” The Doctor tapped his chin, raising his nearly non-existent eyebrows as he turned to Castiel. “What do you think?”  
  
“We can rebuild it,” Castiel said.  
  
“Not what I was talking about,” the Doctor noted, turning towards Martha. “What do you think, Doctor Jones?” He grinned. “One trip? All of space and time? I think _all_ of us could use a little time somewhere else.” He looked pointedly at Castiel, who refused to respond.  
  
Martha snorted, almost grinning herself. “One trip.”  
  
“It’s running away,” Sam pointed out, a little loudly and not entirely happy with this turn of events.  
  
Dean looked at his brother, one corner of his mouth quirking upwards. “It’s what we do, Sammy. ” His eyes flicked briefly to Martha, then back to Sam. “You’re gonna love that thing. Hell, did you see the _library_?”  
  
“What about you, Castiel?” the Doctor said quietly, edging away from the brothers Winchester and draping an arm around the angel’s shoulders. “What are your plans, now that you’ve won your war?”  
  
Castiel watched Dean and Sam discretely, letting the last Time Lord lead him away. “It is not a matter I’ve given much thought,” he admitted reluctantly. “Perhaps it is time I did.”  
  
The Doctor grinned ever so slightly. “All the time in the universe when you’ve got a TARDIS. Besides, someone should try to keep your Dean out of trouble, don‘t you think?”  
  
The noise Castiel made was _almost_ a laugh, but it could have been verily easily been mistaken for an exhalation.  
  


***

  
  
_In a place to the right of the material plain, an archangel and a cherub stood in the burned out remains of a Kansas farm house._  
  
“I died,” said the cherub as the archangel helped her out of the basement and in to the clean, open air. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a chocolate bar, unwrapping the foil and taking a bite.   
  
“That you did, Sparky. This is what comes next.”  
  


***

  
  
River Song twirled the delicate, feather shaped crystal between her fingers, watching it pulse with gentle golden light, each movement causing the feather to make a soft, musical sound -- like a wet finger being run over the rim of a glass. Looking at it, not knowing what she knew, a person might have assumed that it was just a chunk of rock that had been carved into that shape, but River Song knew better. She still remembered the day Loki had plucked the feather from his wings and handed it to her with a smirk and instructions.  
  
“Well it’s about time,” River murmured, reaching for the bit of psychic paper that would let her signal the Doctor.  
  
  


_**The End** _


End file.
